2008-04-30 - Infohoarding notes
On Wednesday 30 April 2008, Puckett wrote:
> "There is also a Swedish play called Samlarna (The Hoarders), by
> Lotta Lotass, which has not been translated to English."
>
> Now, that piqued my curiosity....
I have emailed Lotta Lotass. She can write English [in emails],
apparently, so we'll see what comes of that. It's interesting that the
hoarding behavior of these brothers was only addressed in a very
pop-news context, rather than from anything we know about individuals
that hoard, such as the psych and (now) neurosci. This is probably
because the City was silly enough to sell all of the junk instead of
digging up information and seeing what was going on. The article
definitely implicates OCD but definitely not the order subset, and I
would have to guess something else on the autism spectrum too since
they were isolationists and Homer Collyer was even jigging up a gas
engine into an electricity generator, making primitive x-ray machines,
did an engineering major, had a medical scientist as a father, cached
15,000 books, etc. One of the reviews of the plays that I was clicking
through said that " ... Homer had an excellent calibur of intellect,
the type which could sit and stare at a leaf all day." I don't know if
you can call them crazy when they were building working engines,
composing music and going about their inventings. Yes, ultimately they
did kill themselves (boobytraps without failsafe mechanisms), but
still. What was going on? Why did they bother to hoarde equipment and
tools and materials, books, information, etc., rather than completely
useless junk, like fingernail clippings in other weird cases of
compulsive hoarding?
"Everyone is born with just so much sociability, Langley. So much
toleration for the world and those upon it. Over the years this
indulgence is worn away; every day this wall of friendliness and
courtesy, trust or affection is chipped at. Some walls are so thick
they last people all their lives. Others wear thin with age. I was born
with a brittle wall, Langley and so were you." -- Homer
But I think that particular playwright is missing the forrest for the
trees .. it's not the socializing, it's the physical phenomena going on
there; their compulsive behaviors, how would they have described it?
Was it compulsive stealing too? And if so, were they stealing from
themselves, a little ecology of stealing and editing flows of materials
throughout their jungle of stuff? I can imagine two guys running around
Harlem at night stealing garbage over their heads and snickering across
the street, sure. Would have been good to send in an observation
team ... wouldn't the minute details of compulsive hoarding be greatly
amplified, to the extent that common stereotypical behavior patterns
could be documented?
- Bryan
Random notes
Lotta Lotass. Samlarna. 2005. Mjukpärm med präglat omslag, 122 sidor med
förord av författaren. ISBN 91-631-7215-1 Pris 50 kr. WorldCat shows a
copy in the National Library of Sweden and that's about it, a good
review on marginal.se, and I googlestalked the author's email address:
lotta.lotass@lit.gu.se
http://gup.ub.gu.se/gup/lists/publications/people/
Hm.
> ... There also are two foreign plays: Anthea Haddow, Tunnel Visions
> (2004) (Scotland) and Lotta Lotass, The Hoarders (2005) (Sweden). ...
Review of Tunnel Visions:
http://www.britishtheatreguide.info/reviews/tunnelvisions-rev.htm
> It's clear that the technical expertise of the team behind Tunnel
> Vision leaves nothing to be desired. Each point in the script is
> highlighted by Haddow's score, which runs though almost the entire
> performance - and when there's not actual music being played, the
> vivid sounds that penetrate Homer's dark world help the audience
> sympathize with his predicament. In the programme, Haddow writes of
> how she "attempted to represent their decaying home as a living,
> breathing entity." She certainly succeeded - even more of an
> achievement when one considers that set designer Axel Morgenthaler has
> made the brothers' home up not of the piles and corridors of the trash
> that filled the factual Collyer brother's home, but of simple white
> screens which are then maneuvered into place.
http://www.nichsmith.com/projects/theatrical/tunnel_visions.htm
http://groups.google.com/group/schl.proj.channel4/browse_frm/thread/5edebe69b714ca24/dc5c5d4d3f7bd610?lnk=st&q=%22Lotta+Lotass%22+#dc5c5d4d3f7bd610
[after forgetting about this email for a few hours]
Downloading is a packrat's dream
http://www.wired.com/techbiz/people/news/2007/03/72737
infohoarding
> But what's the difference between an avid collector and an infohoarder
> who will eventually suffocate under digital rubbish? How many emails
> are too many? How many e-books? How many bookmarks?
FWIW, I have yet to find an individual who bookmarks more than I. Also,
I don't see any indication that Google nor the Internet Archive is
suffering under 'digital rubbish' -- far from it, in fact they are
commonly seen as a 'beacon of hope'.
________________________________________
http://heybryan.org/