Machines that Kill Time

I'm doing a fair amount of reading about time, and most recently have read most of the way through a book titled The Secret Pulse of Time by Stefan Klein.  It's a pretty light read, if you're interested, but I thought I'd pass along this little tidbit just in case you didn't pick it up from the library straight away...  (italics are the author's, the bold is mine)

"Today, of course, we have nearly perfect ways to kill time in the present and in our memory in one fell swoop, as every television viewer knows from experience.  While you stare at the tube and surf through the channels, the stream of rapidly changing images engages your senses, and the evening flies by.  But if you try to recall these hours a few days later, they seem to have vanished without a trace: The TV programs meant so little to you that your brain retained none of what you saw.  The images with which it was bombarded killed the time in the present, and their inconsequentiality erased the time when you thought about it afterward.

This effect of television and other media is often overlooked: Not only do they rob us of time that might be spent in a more meaningful pursuit, but they also create a zone devoid of memory.  We might even say that electronic entertainment shortens our lives.

Even more dramatic is the "television paradox," Jena sociologist Hartmut Rosa's name for the way time shrinks when you play a video game.  Games of that sort are designed to grab your attention.  You don't notice how quickly the hours go by until you realize you're hungry--or when your partner complains about how much time you've been wasting.  But apart from a few isolated images, or a little thrill of achievement when you scored points, you come away with no memories.  It is as though a black hole had swallowed up this piece of your life."

Ouch.  I've definitely experienced both of those.  In fact, I'd even add time wasted on the internet.  I know there have been times when I've killed an hour or two or three reading stuff online (usually in the form of articles or blogs).  When Carrie asks me what I did during that time I can hardly believe that I spent so much time online, and I often only remember a few keys points from all the reading, even right after I finish.  The time just disappears.