Is The Internet quiet enough for you?
May 6th, 2009I have been reading Sara Maitland’s A Book of Silence (London, 2008). This is an absorbing read and a brave piece of research. She takes the subject of silence and runs with it, or perhaps retreats with it.
One of the many discoveries about silence that she explores is that there are different kinds of silence. She also argues persuasively that silence can be much more than the absence of sound. She argues that silence has had a bad press and that silence can often be life enhancing and rejuvenating – and therefore something that we might regard much more positively. But this is not a book for paraphrasing or reducing to a few conclusions. It rewards reading in its entirety.
I’m not quite sure where silence fits into The Internet project. Computers are certainly not silent. There is a constant background noise from the PC, Laptop or mobile phone. Until comparatively recently, exchanges on The Internet tended to be relatively quiet but with video, MP3 and conferencing we have lost some of that comparative quietness. The Internet is much more like real life, I suppose, now. There are frequent interruptions and intrusions. Perhaps we should sometimes get back to making The Internet as silent an experience as possible for us by turning off the sound and protecting ouselves as far as possible from intrusion by way of advertising or email?