Environmental Considerations

While I do walk a bunch, appreciate my bicycle, make use of public transit, and have a spiffy 65mpg car, this one isn't about "The Environment" in the sense of any particular planet's ecosystem. Rather, I'm interested in much more immediate environments... or surroundings, or local conditions. Specifically, the incoming-communications environment of a single (one) person as they move through their day, or year, or life.

For example, Richard awakes in the morning to the sound of a clock radio playing Mr. Mom on the country station, followed by a bit of morning news. He gets up and drives through morning rush hour to get to work, where he's yelled at from nine to five both by the customers wanting the help desk to fix their computer, as well as by his manager who doesn't appreciate the low turnover rate Richard incurs by trying to prevent the customer's problem from cropping up again later. During coffee break, he commiserates with his fellow help deskers over what an elbow their boss is, what impatient idiots the clients are, and what they'll do to get away from it over the weekend. Evening comes, the work day is done, and after another rush hour, Richard relaxes in front of some Prime Time Television, as well as catching some of the news as provided by the liberal/conservative-biased media. A McDonald's commercial reminds him he's hungry, so he heats up some Lean Cuisine before settling down again to watch some evening programming and then, after a while, hit the hay.

There's Richard's day, in which he was exposed to radio news, radio entertainment programming, depersonalized rush hour drivers, angry clients, a boss asking him to sacrifice quality for quantity, co-workers reinforcing negative views of the job and the positives of avoiding people, television advertizing, television news, television advertizing, television entertainment programming, and most likely some more television advertizing.

In the process of receiving communication, it is very likely that piekories (emphatically plural) are hitching a ride on the conversation and hoping to get lodged in the listener's piek. Consider the content and quantity of piekories that Richard, in a normal work day, is likely to be exposed to. "It is important to know these pieces of news" comes in over radio and TV. "It is important to distance yourself from people, they're just going to be a pain" gets repeatedly reinforced at work. Dealing with an angry and often malevolent mass of high-speed traffic probably gives exposure to all sorts of convoluted and unpleasant piekories. "It is important to be [insert TV star's character's behavior here]" is often implicit. And, of course, advertisements are little more than delivery systems for laboratory-bred piekories of market-tested potency. "It is important to buy this, to look like this, to conform to this, to give money to this, to believe this, to hate this, to fear this..."

The environment I'm currently interested in is, in essence, the collection of piekories someone is exposed to. It is, in a sense, the air and water and food (and junk food) that someone's piek is called on to process and properly digest, reject, or detoxify.

In particular, I'm interested in the quality of this environment, as well as its density. A three-hour documentary on peeling paint, for example, is not likely to bear anywhere near the amount of piekories that three solid hours of commercials would, so is far less dense. In terms of quality, the first may, perhaps, bear the piekory "It is important to not eat peeling paint that may contain lead", which while not a fantastic one, isn't all that bad, while three hours of ads would probably hold a lot of bad piekories and perhaps a few that weren't bad... but, overall, would be of far less quality that paint-peeling, which isn't burdened with any bad ones. Ads might, by sheer volume, be able to muster more good piekories than paint-peeling could, but would still be of lower quality because of the far greater volume of bad ones.