EBlog
Has technology killed the doodle?
November 4, 2007 | Posted by: Lee
Whatever happened to doodling when you were bored? I believe it's been replaced with portable phones and computers.
Last Thursday, I spent the day at The New New Internet conference at the Reston Hyatt - an incredibly well run event, by the way. What wasn't so great was all the attendees working on their laptops, clicking away, beeping confirmation on whatever task they were doing, all very distracting. Add to that the random phones and BlackBerry's ringing, chirping, and donging and you've got a group of people in dire need of the doodle.
The doodle is the perfect way to kill time when you're bored or don't want to pay attention. It's quiet, non-distracting to your neighbor, and has the added benefit of making you look like you're actively taking notes.
Are we becoming a less creative society because we don't doodle anymore? We're certainly not as polite.
When's the last time you filled the border of a page with doodles? Give it a try, you just might find it spurs some creative energy that's been missing.
Tags for this post:
creativity random
Categorized in: Technology, Observations and Random Musings
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Comments
November 05 2007 - 12:55 AM | by Nicholas
Are you assuming that all those people on their laptops were bored and not paying attention to the sessions? I had my laptop out at every session at the conference I went to a couple weeks ago; I was taking notes, because I write far too slowly to effectively keep up. Not to mention that using a laptop made it easy for me to re-organize notes (on the fly and after the fact), add other bits, and print notes out later. Bonus: the software I used, VoodooPad, also allowed me to doodle those concepts that words just couldn’t capture.
Besides, I don’t think you can blame technology if you think society is less creative or polite.
November 05 2007 - 12:35 PM | by Marty Stake
I think the new doodle is mindlessly updating and checking Facebook. That’s why they call it “writing on your wall”.
November 05 2007 - 03:44 PM | by Lee
Technology has given us as a society many useful things and I agree that society is responsible for how we use it.
My intent was not to malign technology. Heck technology is responsible for our business. I thought it interesting how technology has changed our behavior (or how we have let it change our behavior). And, quite frankly I miss the doodle.
Did you know the doodle first appeared in the early 17th century? While it started off as meaning “fool” or “simpleton”, may famous doodlers have emerged over the years - Ralph Waldo Emerson, John Keats, and Sergio Aragones.