Less Is More! (But Is It Really?)

By Brian Donlon

More really is less in the 21st century.

More information options. More entertainment options. More tools to manage just about every facet of our lives. It is nirvana for the technologists.

Seemingly there is an app “for that” and just about everything.

According to fellow LinkedIn contributor Bob Williams, a technologist is defined by someone with a curiosity and a breadth of knowledge.

Growing up in the outer borough of Queens in New York City, I saw plenty of “technologists” on a daily basis. Usually, they could be spotted around 4 p.m. through the window of the Kew Forest Bar & Grill where they would be huddled over a frosty bottle of Rheingold or a foamy mug of Schaeffer. Both brews were “imported” from their breweries in the not-so-far away borough of Brooklyn and were known for their jingles as much as their taste.

In between slurps of beer down at the Kew Forest, a visitor would hear a whole breadth of knowledge make its way across the mahogany bar. Who needed the internet when you had these guys? They solved everything from the on-field woes of the New York Mets to how to fix the crumbling New York City subway system. Of course, their technological expertise at the time was mostly limited to reaching up and turning on the Philco television set that hung over the bar.

While long on opinions, they were definitely “less in more” kind of guys. If they were still around today, they would probably be aligned with The Minimalists.? If you have not come across these gentlemen on their various platforms, the best way to describe them is as the leaders of less.

Joshua Fields Millburn, T.K. Coleman, and Ryan Nicodemus show their followers how to streamline their lives to find more happiness. The irony is that they are really technologists of sorts. They spread the gospel of reduction through podcasts, a web-based blog as well as more analog methods such as films, books and events.

In one of their many essays titled “Reasons I Don’t Own a TV,” ?Milburn writes, “?Awareness?is the most precious kind of freedom. We should cherish it. But TV often makes us oblivious to the world around us. And thus, in a roundabout way, TV robs us of our?freedom.’’

Ouch!

As someone who has made a living from television, I certainly never thought I was contributing to the theft of anybody’s rights to anything much less freedom.

Milburn continues to outline the pitfalls and dangers of TV including how it “has the ability to rob us of our creativity.”

Double ouch!!

I wonder what the old gang down at the Kew Forest would say about that!

After condemning TV to a certain cultural death, Milburn offers, “Sure, watching TV is easy. But is it worth it? That is the question you must ask yourself. I am not suggesting that you have to get rid of your TV to be a minimalist. You don’t. But you always have options.”

Apparently so do “The Minamilists.” Ironically, they too have benefitted from the largesse of television and its video offshoots.

Available on Netflix – for your viewing pleasure – is a documentary, “Minimalism.”

There is also a second doc, “Less Is More.”

Now, clearly with mobile phones, portable tablets, state-of-the-art laptops, one can watch either of these video enterprises. But most people watch Netflix on their televisions. ?Anyone see the irony here?

Few would debate – even those old barflies in Queens who loved that Philco TV – that a viewing experience on a 65-inch, 4K flat screen television is infinitely better than any top-of-the-line iPhone. Even Apple, which has been a leader in creating alternative “screens,” saw value in calling its streaming service Apple TV+ as opposed to Tablet+ or Watch+ or Phone+.

Television, be it the hardware or the video services that emanate from it, has long been the whipping boy for society’s ills. Certainly, these days, when anyone turns it on, it is not more is more, it is more like “Holy crap, where did all this stuff come from?”

Paid streaming services, free streaming services on connected devices (full disclosure, I work for one), cable, satellite, over the air broadcast, on-demand video it is all there for the taking and more to come.

But, according to the audience measurement company, Nielsen, American adults receive 206 television channels, on average. But in truth people watch only 20 each month.

So, you can be a minimalist and toss your TV into the nearest electronic recyclable heap and convince yourself you have decluttered your life and have joined the “less is more” army.

The data on viewing patterns indicates that more does not beget more. Rather it offers choice. Freedom, if you will, to watch or not. To be informed or not. To be entertained or not.

More can be less. The choice is really yours. ??

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