Hoy, echando un vistazo a las webs que más frecuento, me encontré con el enlace a un artículo titulado Consume less, create more que me llamó la atención por tratarse de un tema que, precisamente, me ha precoupado en alguna que otra ocasión. Tras preguntarse si quizá leer un libro mientras va en el autobús no sea mucho mejor que perder el tiempo en el móvil, el autor concluye:

Smartphones, I’ve decided, are not evil. This entire essay was composed on an iPhone. What’s evil is passive consumption, in all its forms.

Twitter, Facebook, Instagram—we can all agree that these are serious timewasters. But what about The Economist or War and Peace? How much can you really remember from all of those New York Times op-eds you’ve read? Could you summarize the major themes of Grapes of Wrath?

Most knowledge worth having comes from practice. It comes from doing. It comes from creating. Reading about the trade war with China doesn’t make you smarter—it gives you something to say at dinner parties. It gives you the illusion that you have the vaguest idea what is happening in our enormously complex world.

A lot of ink has been spilled about the perils of modern technology. How it distracts us, how it promotes unhealthy comparisons with others, how it makes us fat, how it limits social interaction, how it spies on us. And all of these things are probably true, to some extent.

But the real tragedy of modern technology is that it’s turned us into consumers. Our voracious consumption of media parallels our consumption of fossil fuels, corn syrup, and plastic straws. And although we’re starting to worry about our consumption of those physical goods, we seem less concerned about our consumption of information.

We treat information as necessarily good, and comfort ourselves with the feeling that whatever article or newsletter we waste our time with is actually good for us. We equate reading with self improvement, even though we forget most of what we’ve read, and what we remember isn’t useful.

So stop reading and start creating. Paint, draw, compose, code, or plan. It will be hard. It will be slow. It will be frustrating. But I promise it will be worth it.

Aunque en ocasiones uno tiene la impresión de que el autor es un adolescente inmaduro tratando de reafirmar su identidad a través de un complejo de superioridad demasiado obvio, ello no quita para que la reflexión principal del artículo sea relevante. El caso es que, ciertamente, son demasiadas las ocasiones en las que nos planteamos si las nuevas tecnologías son el problema cuando, quizá, lo que debiéramos preguntarnos en su lugar es el tipo de actividad que estamos realizando. O, para explicarlo de otra manera, poco importa si usamos nuevas o viejas tecnologías si lo que estamos haciendo es consumir pasivamente. Por el contrario, si estamos creando algo de manera activa, no debiera importar tanto si usamos nuevas o viejas tecnologías. Lo que importa es la acción, más que los medios o herramientas. {enlace a esta entrada}