Skimming New Liberal Arts today this bit about stillness, from Andrew Fitzgerald's blurb on attention economics, jumped out at me:

And lastly, but most importantly—how do you turn it all off?  Massive parallel input of interesting information at hyper-speed is addictive—but your brain needs rest. Learning to be still brings not only the mental discipline necessary for proper focus, but also the opportunity for that rare insight or intuition beyond your day-to-day productivity. There are signals you need to hear that won’t come through your phone or email and it’s easy to deafen yourself with information overload.

Recently I've been trying to learn how to meditate. It seemed like something to try from things Dan Benjamin said about it on Back to Work, so I signed up on Health Month and ticked it in there and have been plugging away at it. I've always felt willing to ignore received wisdom (as bad as I am at that for things that count), so when everyone's gnashing about the surplus of information, stillness seems like a valuable skill to cultivate.

Information is an interesting word. This week I got my stuff finally moved into my apartment (and I have kind of a cold this week I'm trying to prevent), so I also started rereading Anathem last night instead of doing something useful. It uses that idea of stillness pretty well, if only from the idea of a clique of people crawling up inside a Clock of the Long Now with their creed of long-won rituals.

Another way it resonates is by the word play Stephenson uses in his world building – busting real words back down to their stem meanings so he can reuse them – which is why it reminds me of information. I love that word because its common meaning, as a sort of half-baked step between data and knowledge, is so far from its roots, which come out plain in Wordnik's first definition from the old-timey Century dictionary:

1. Communication of form or element; infusion, as of an animating or actuating principle.

Information is really that thing what makes form in. When we take it, it can reform or deform us, or if it's a flood it might just hollow us out. I'm trying not to overextend this analogy, but stillness seems like a force in opposition to that, so I hope to nurture what little I can.