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There is now a CONTENT FREEZE for Mercury while we switch to a new platform. It began on Friday, March 10 at 6pm and will end on Wednesday, March 15 at noon. No new content can be created during this time, but all material in the system as of the beginning of the freeze will be migrated to the new platform, including users and groups. Functionally the new site is identical to the old one. webteam@gatech.edu
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Ian Bogost, a professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology School of Literature, Media, and Communication, recently wrote an article entitled “I Tried to Limit My Screen Time” for The Atlantic.
Here's an excerpt:
There are people who hate Twitter, and there are people who also hate themselves for using it anyway. I’m the second kind. Maybe everyone who uses the service is now. It doesn’t have to be Twitter, either. For you it might be Facebook, or Instagram, or Snapchat, or whatever other app that was built to farm your attention and now successfully reaps it abundantly.
For me, the loathing is multiple. First, there’s the compulsion of loading the app at all: of flicking its infinite scroll whenever I’m idle, even just briefly—at a stoplight, in front of the microwave, in the bathroom. Then there are the things I see there: the angry or bitter or stupid posts that make me angry or bitter or stupid in turn. And the things I share on the service, too: things I regret, or come close enough to posting to produce a phantom guilt that feels equally bad.
The School of Literature, Media, and Communication is a unit of the Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts.