vintagegeekculture:

I’d like to thank you for the kind things you said, and I want to help you deal with two issues I struggle with: how do you get more knowledgeable, and how do you keep a handle on the need to fidget and click around?

To be more knowledgeable, it’s important to understand the difference between facts and knowledge. Facts are unrelated data points, like “Elmo Lincoln was the first screen Tarzan in 1919.” Knowledge is the broader context, the frame, the sweep of people, events, and others you contextualize and put facts into. If you have knowledge, you can put facts into context. If you hear a new fact, you remember it because you understand “where it goes,” it’s place in the bigger “story.” If you have knowledge, even if you don’t have a specific fact, you can talk about the topic intelligently since you know a lot of things “around” that fact.

If you want to become more knowledgeable about classic scifi (for example), the best way is to start with broader overviews first, and then you read individual works that you can slip into that mental framework. Get that? Start broad then zoom in. 

A few places to start: 

• The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction is ultra-newbie friendly, with illustrations, broader overviews, definitions of terms, and a key look at the major works and authors. It turns all of scifi into one big story. 

• Seekers of Tomorrow by Sam Moskowitz is a great overview of the history of early scifi up until the 1970s by the people who were there. It’s worth it because it’s very close up. 

• Finally, I recommend David Kyle’s A Pictorial History of Science Fiction because it is more on the fandom side of things as opposed to the writing side of things. 

Also, you have to read, which is non-negotiable. Basically, by their very nature, computers and phones give you a kind of artificial ADHD. I love my phone a lot, it’s a wonder gadget cooler than anything Star Trek characters have, but it is impossible to focus on any one task at a computer. I love reading – if I was bored at a bus stop, I could read the back of a candy bar wrapper – but I find it impossible to do at a computer. Because reading requires absolute concentration…and at my computer or phone, I start clicking away and getting antsy and checking my email again or tumblr blog or something. 

So, there’s my solution: take some time and go to a coffee place or a bar (if you’re old enough to drink) or a library without your phone, and bring a book and spend a few hours there. Don’t worry about looking like a hipster, because nobody is looking at you and nobody gives a damn. Also, if you’re old enough to do this and mature enough to enjoy this activity responsibly, being in a bar late at night where people are has the added bonus of helping get you laid…this could be an article onto itself, but 90% of life is really just getting out of the house. 

I know what you mean when you say it’s hard to watch an episode through at a computer. The solution is obvious: don’t watch anything at a computer. If you have a dedicated streaming or smart TV in the living room or something, watch it on that. Or, better yet, watch it with a friend, appointment viewing: “hey Bob, let’s have a Babylon 5 night, what do you think?” You can watch movies, drink Scotch (or whatever you like), smoke some weed, and play two-player Spelunky. Other people keep you sane. I don’t know how young you are, but this appointment visiting is harder to do if you are too young to drive and live somewhere spread out…but there are ways around that.

The key thing to understand when watching TV is to have your mind be active at all times. You have to keep the analytical portion of your brain active. Consider: brainwaves are slower when watching TV than asleep. So, here’s what I do: I keep a pad by my couch at all times I write my thoughts into about what I’m watching. Once, when watching Avatar: the Last Airbender, I had a thought I wrote down, “what if one of the Avatars was responsible for a murder, and Aang was held responsible by the legal system for it?” Oddly enough, that was the plot of the very next episode I saw!