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#29: News

2 min read

Some people start their day by reading The New York Times. Others end it by watching the nightly news. Some get it from The Daily Show. Others download it from a variety weblogs. Some keep up-to-the-minute by following CNN. Others have instant news updates automatically text messaged to their phone. But everybody seems to agree: it’s a citizen’s responsibility to keep up with the news. Everybody except me.

I think following the news is a waste of time. - Aaron Swartz

This quote is from the post I Hate the News from Aaron Swartz.

Think about it how many times you’ve listen to some news of tv channels, radio channels or social media news pages and what advantage you get from it if you know it. How many times you’ve read or heard about something and how many times these news affected you in some one?

But finally, I’d like to argue that following the news isn’t just a waste of time, it’s actively unhealthy. Edward Tufte notes that when he used to read the New York Times in the morning, it scrambled his brain with so many different topics that he couldn’t get any real intellectual work done the rest of the day. - Aaron Swartz

Maybe you would say

But if I stop following the news I won’t be up to date

Try stop following the news and people around you will tell you what’s going on even if you are not interested. It’s like you save time by not following on yourself the news and still know for free what’s currently going on.