Too Much Information

We have reached the end of another broadcast day...

I remember a simpler time with fewer distractions.

It was a wonderful moment in my life when there was no internet, and TV stations ended the broadcast day at midnight. 

The madness actually stopped, replaced with a test pattern, and a sine wave tone.

Today we are constantly bombarded with information, images, and sounds. All day, every day. 

If TV stations still stopped broadcasting at midnight today people would do what they should be doing - sleep.

It has been a while since futurists have been predicting a 24 hour world where nothing ever closes. Why would we want that? 

Just in case you feel like shopping between 3:00 and 5:30 AM and don't want to be inconvenienced by shuttered, dark stores?

Go to bed, and let the shop keepers sleep, too. 

We don't need a 24 hour world. What we really need is a 12 hour world. The other 12 hours we can forget about doing and concentrate on being.

There are holdouts in some places where stores are still closed on Sundays, the people preferring to keep at least one day a week free of the preoccupation of endless commerce. 

North Americans see see an average of 3000 ads per day, and make hundreds of decisions per hour. 

We can use some of those decisions to limit the amount of information we take in. 

Too much information in our lives has negative consequences for our mental well being. 

We can choose to end the broadcast day. 

We can make it stop.