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If it weren't for the crushing boredom of the suburbs when I was a child, I might not have learned how to program computers. I would never have thought so much

If it weren't for the crushing boredom of the suburbs when I was a child, I might not have learned how to program computers. I would never have thought so much about spaceships. The original Star Wars trilogy wouldn't have been nearly as cool to discover. I also play traditional music, though boredom wasn't part of my discovering that. However, silence was a big part of traditional music, in the past. You need empty space if you're going to approach something with a fresh, receptive mind and heart. When something is so common that it becomes an ubiquitous commodity, we tend to tune it out and become desensitized. It's this way for all kinds of culture and media. If you're not familiar enough with the really great parts of traditional musics, then think of media around sex. Or, for that matter, video games. The transition from boredom to fascination to determination has been a start of many significant parts of my life.

voidhorse 7y ago
Totally! I think what’s really important is having space to think. Stimulation seems to stopper the possibility of deep-thought. Having significant, radical, perhaps discomforting thoughts becomes impossible when we’re constantly aborting our opportunity to think by filling our lives with distractions. It’s an activity which really does require absence—séquestration and quiet space. I try to set aside time each day for thinking. Often I don’t wind up thinking anything very interesting, but these brief quiet periods have an overall effect of making me feel sharper and more attuned to the world around me. When I’m constantly bombarded by stimulants I begin to feel like a meat-dummy. A buzzing uselessness. A corpse doll. The ubiquitous, incessant access to entertainment, and even to knowledge, that we enjoy today can be far more harmful than helpful.
- baxtr 7y ago
  Interesting! How do you deal with devices during that time?
- kbr2000 7y ago
  I can suggest to give Future Shock (1970, Alvin Toffler) a go, it too has some thoughts about the effects of over-stimulation. Good thinking :)
brootstrap 7y ago
Modern music is a mirror image of the internet culture as well. Blasted with as many synth hooks and processed vocal melodies as possible. I was recently turned onto this band called Wand. If you want to feel some delicious space in a song, check out Scarecrow by Wand. The video is amazingly simple too. The constant bombardment of shit is so real though. I want to spend time with my wife and kid. Sometimes it's hard to focus though. Everywhere you look in public there is something flashing to get your attention. Thankfully we _are_ able to turn things off for a while and just be with each other.
- fokinsean 7y ago
  +1 for Wand, been following them for a while. Their music has evolved quite a bit from earlier albums but they are still one of my favorites.
- conception 7y ago
  Random rec but first listening to this song I got a Dawn of Midi vibe. You should check them out - their album is basically one continuous song so you can't really sample a single track and get a feel for how everything is just a single flow. Just start Dysnomia on track 1 and let it go.
- john___matrix 7y ago
  Thanks for the heads up on Wand, just given them a listen and definitely some lovely music to get into a zone.
- SolaceQuantum 7y ago
  "Modern music is a mirror image of the internet culture as well. Blasted with as many synth hooks and processed vocal melodies as possible" I don't know if that's entirely fair- orchestras have always been quite overwhelming to the senses, as have choirs and organs, IMO. Swing dance music is also quite fast and filled. Similarly, in my music spheres, minimalism is quite familiar- popular music "unplugged" has made a large comeback.
  - stcredzero 7y ago
asdfman123 7y ago
Very well said.
opportune 7y ago
Same here, I learned how to program because I was bored in highschool math and physics classes and realized most of the work was just applying an algorithm to some inputs. I'm young enough to have had smartphones when I was in highschool... but I really do feel bad for younger kids these days now that their smartphones are so much better and the ecosystem is so much better, I can imagine they almost never have an opportunity to be bored. There really should be some sort of BASIC emulator that comes shipped with smartphones because smartphones don't really easily present an opportunity to start programming even though they're reasonably powerful devices
- ajcarpy2005 7y ago
  I'm studying C# with the app SoloLearn for Android
  - opportune 7y ago
    Interesting, are you able to build and run natively on your phone?
    - ajcarpy2005 7y ago
      Yes they have a compiler
ajcarpy2005 7y ago
I urge you to listen to Aggaloch Falling Snow and Limbs. Listen with an open mind. It's very atmospheric. In another genre is Field Divisions Modest Mountains.
- sk0g 7y ago
  Good recommendations! The chants of "we carry death, out of the village" have been stuck in my head ever since I started listening to them! Absolutely lovely music, but some of their music is more black metal. Not as accessible, but the albums the recommended songs listen to are easy to get into. Also, for anyone wondering what the hell is going on in the intro to limbs, it's actually an e-bow, this weird magnetic gadget that slowly swells guitars strings. Makes it sound rather orchestral :) I believe either Muse or Radiohead make heavy use of it too. EDIT: forgot to mention, check out Mogwai! Not that similar, but it's instrumental and great for getting in the zone!
ne01 7y ago
I really like this: > However, silence was a big part of traditional music, in the past. A glass is useful because of its empty space. You need the emptiness to fill it up with something. For inventions/ideas/startups, you need some empty space in your mind. Think of a bored computer (one that is not used to its maximum capacity). It's like a computer that uses swap memory v.s. one that has a few GBs of free RAM. Which one would you rather use? I say, it is good to be bored and stay bored -- don't rush to fill up the empty space.
- mrmuagi 7y ago
  > Think of a bored computer (one that is not used to its maximum capacity). It's like a computer that uses swap memory v.s. one that has a few GBs of free RAM. Which one would you rather use? A bored computer would just be one that idles more than it schedules work. Memory is not a good anthropomorphism to boredom. Why? Because swap memory can be beneficial to systems even if RAM is un-exhausted, and a system that has a few GBs of free RAM is a newly booted, or a poorly cached system, the extra ram is just unused extra resources -- untouched. Maybe, the system can be bored waiting for IO, but again this is stalled CPU cycles. The glass analogy would fit better to annotate the memory system architecture itself as the glass, a rigid and crafted system, and the water as the actual physical pages, the actual dynamic data that flows through.
- DJohnBenton 7y ago
  Like the Tao Te Ching passage: Thirty spokes share the wheel's hub; It is the centre hole that makes it useful. Shape clay into a vessel; It is the space within that makes it useful. Cut doors and windows for a room; It is the holes which make it useful. Therefore profit comes from what is there; Usefulness from what is not there.
  - rwnspace 7y ago
    I find this passage resonates most when drawn against my living relationship with the rest of the text. As for the thread, a very straightforward quote: ~ So the unwanting soul sees what's hidden, and the ever-wanting soul sees only what it wants.
chris11 7y ago
That's how Neil Gaiman writes, he gets bored. He gets most of his ideas from boredom. And when he needs to write, he sits down and lets himself only do two things. Write, or look out the window.
ErikAugust 7y ago
In purely audio terms, dynamic range plays a huge part in this. Modern mastering has turned everything into one loud block, there's no room for anything to breathe. In music, I always found it interesting that it was "Smells Like Teen Spirit" that ushered in a pop music revolution - as it had "quiet-loud-quiet" dynamic.
bad_user 7y ago
I grew up in a small city, not really a suburb, and had friends and plenty of daily distractions. When I was going out to play I would then come back with my whole body hurting from how much I ran. Not even sure how to describe that pain, because I can no longer feel it, in spite of me working out. It was this intense visceral pain, literally I could feel my organs tired and yet I was euphoric. And I'm not sure how it was in the US in the eightees and nineties, but in my Eastern European country we grew up without much baby sitting, as our parents were busy and there was no such thing as an "after school", so we were either doing homework or we were outside to play unsupervised. In other words I had a childhood full of distractions and yet I learned programming just fine, from shitty resources gathered from internet cafes with poor internet connections. Got my first computer in '94 and we had plenty of games too, some arguably more fun than what's available today. When I started learning I did so with the desire to create my own games. I think that some people are simply wired with an inclination for such hobbies. Oh and did I mentioned that we were coming out of communism so we had decades of western movies to catch up on, VHS rentals being a huge phenomenon? Boredom is overrated. There's something intrinsically toxic about portable devices of course. But I don't think boredom had anything to do with it.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
abledon 7y ago
now kids watch twitch.tv in the suburbs

voidhorse 7y ago

Totally! I think what’s really important is having space to think. Stimulation seems to stopper the possibility of deep-thought. Having significant, radical, perhaps discomforting thoughts becomes impossible when we’re constantly aborting our opportunity to think by filling our lives with distractions. It’s an activity which really does require absence—séquestration and quiet space. I try to set aside time each day for thinking. Often I don’t wind up thinking anything very interesting, but these brief quiet periods have an overall effect of making me feel sharper and more attuned to the world around me. When I’m constantly bombarded by stimulants I begin to feel like a meat-dummy. A buzzing uselessness. A corpse doll. The ubiquitous, incessant access to entertainment, and even to knowledge, that we enjoy today can be far more harmful than helpful.

baxtr 7y ago
Interesting! How do you deal with devices during that time?
kbr2000 7y ago
I can suggest to give Future Shock (1970, Alvin Toffler) a go, it too has some thoughts about the effects of over-stimulation. Good thinking :)

brootstrap 7y ago

Modern music is a mirror image of the internet culture as well. Blasted with as many synth hooks and processed vocal melodies as possible. I was recently turned onto this band called Wand. If you want to feel some delicious space in a song, check out Scarecrow by Wand. The video is amazingly simple too. The constant bombardment of shit is so real though. I want to spend time with my wife and kid. Sometimes it's hard to focus though. Everywhere you look in public there is something flashing to get your attention. Thankfully we _are_ able to turn things off for a while and just be with each other.

fokinsean 7y ago
+1 for Wand, been following them for a while. Their music has evolved quite a bit from earlier albums but they are still one of my favorites.
conception 7y ago
Random rec but first listening to this song I got a Dawn of Midi vibe. You should check them out - their album is basically one continuous song so you can't really sample a single track and get a feel for how everything is just a single flow. Just start Dysnomia on track 1 and let it go.
john___matrix 7y ago
Thanks for the heads up on Wand, just given them a listen and definitely some lovely music to get into a zone.
SolaceQuantum 7y ago
"Modern music is a mirror image of the internet culture as well. Blasted with as many synth hooks and processed vocal melodies as possible" I don't know if that's entirely fair- orchestras have always been quite overwhelming to the senses, as have choirs and organs, IMO. Swing dance music is also quite fast and filled. Similarly, in my music spheres, minimalism is quite familiar- popular music "unplugged" has made a large comeback.
- stcredzero 7y ago

asdfman123 7y ago

Very well said.

opportune 7y ago

Same here, I learned how to program because I was bored in highschool math and physics classes and realized most of the work was just applying an algorithm to some inputs. I'm young enough to have had smartphones when I was in highschool... but I really do feel bad for younger kids these days now that their smartphones are so much better and the ecosystem is so much better, I can imagine they almost never have an opportunity to be bored. There really should be some sort of BASIC emulator that comes shipped with smartphones because smartphones don't really easily present an opportunity to start programming even though they're reasonably powerful devices

ajcarpy2005 7y ago
I'm studying C# with the app SoloLearn for Android
- opportune 7y ago
  Interesting, are you able to build and run natively on your phone?
  - ajcarpy2005 7y ago
    Yes they have a compiler

ajcarpy2005 7y ago

I urge you to listen to Aggaloch Falling Snow and Limbs. Listen with an open mind. It's very atmospheric. In another genre is Field Divisions Modest Mountains.

sk0g 7y ago
Good recommendations! The chants of "we carry death, out of the village" have been stuck in my head ever since I started listening to them! Absolutely lovely music, but some of their music is more black metal. Not as accessible, but the albums the recommended songs listen to are easy to get into. Also, for anyone wondering what the hell is going on in the intro to limbs, it's actually an e-bow, this weird magnetic gadget that slowly swells guitars strings. Makes it sound rather orchestral :) I believe either Muse or Radiohead make heavy use of it too. EDIT: forgot to mention, check out Mogwai! Not that similar, but it's instrumental and great for getting in the zone!

ne01 7y ago

I really like this: > However, silence was a big part of traditional music, in the past. A glass is useful because of its empty space. You need the emptiness to fill it up with something. For inventions/ideas/startups, you need some empty space in your mind. Think of a bored computer (one that is not used to its maximum capacity). It's like a computer that uses swap memory v.s. one that has a few GBs of free RAM. Which one would you rather use? I say, it is good to be bored and stay bored -- don't rush to fill up the empty space.

mrmuagi 7y ago
> Think of a bored computer (one that is not used to its maximum capacity). It's like a computer that uses swap memory v.s. one that has a few GBs of free RAM. Which one would you rather use? A bored computer would just be one that idles more than it schedules work. Memory is not a good anthropomorphism to boredom. Why? Because swap memory can be beneficial to systems even if RAM is un-exhausted, and a system that has a few GBs of free RAM is a newly booted, or a poorly cached system, the extra ram is just unused extra resources -- untouched. Maybe, the system can be bored waiting for IO, but again this is stalled CPU cycles. The glass analogy would fit better to annotate the memory system architecture itself as the glass, a rigid and crafted system, and the water as the actual physical pages, the actual dynamic data that flows through.
DJohnBenton 7y ago
Like the Tao Te Ching passage: Thirty spokes share the wheel's hub; It is the centre hole that makes it useful. Shape clay into a vessel; It is the space within that makes it useful. Cut doors and windows for a room; It is the holes which make it useful. Therefore profit comes from what is there; Usefulness from what is not there.
- rwnspace 7y ago
  I find this passage resonates most when drawn against my living relationship with the rest of the text. As for the thread, a very straightforward quote: ~ So the unwanting soul sees what's hidden, and the ever-wanting soul sees only what it wants.

chris11 7y ago

That's how Neil Gaiman writes, he gets bored. He gets most of his ideas from boredom. And when he needs to write, he sits down and lets himself only do two things. Write, or look out the window.

ErikAugust 7y ago

In purely audio terms, dynamic range plays a huge part in this. Modern mastering has turned everything into one loud block, there's no room for anything to breathe. In music, I always found it interesting that it was "Smells Like Teen Spirit" that ushered in a pop music revolution - as it had "quiet-loud-quiet" dynamic.

bad_user 7y ago

I grew up in a small city, not really a suburb, and had friends and plenty of daily distractions. When I was going out to play I would then come back with my whole body hurting from how much I ran. Not even sure how to describe that pain, because I can no longer feel it, in spite of me working out. It was this intense visceral pain, literally I could feel my organs tired and yet I was euphoric. And I'm not sure how it was in the US in the eightees and nineties, but in my Eastern European country we grew up without much baby sitting, as our parents were busy and there was no such thing as an "after school", so we were either doing homework or we were outside to play unsupervised. In other words I had a childhood full of distractions and yet I learned programming just fine, from shitty resources gathered from internet cafes with poor internet connections. Got my first computer in '94 and we had plenty of games too, some arguably more fun than what's available today. When I started learning I did so with the desire to create my own games. I think that some people are simply wired with an inclination for such hobbies. Oh and did I mentioned that we were coming out of communism so we had decades of western movies to catch up on, VHS rentals being a huge phenomenon? Boredom is overrated. There's something intrinsically toxic about portable devices of course. But I don't think boredom had anything to do with it.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

abledon 7y ago

now kids watch twitch.tv in the suburbs