THE INTERNET - PROFESSIONAL LEVELS OF TIME MISMANAGEMENT

Long ago I heard about a project that intended to connect all the computers in the world and use them to decode the electromagnetic signals coming from the outer space. It had something to do with all the stuff involving alien life. If they send us a message, we must be prepared, although that's a little bit like looking at your cell phone all the time, waiting a call from Angelina Jolie, even though she doesn't know you at all. Well, the thing worked via some kind of screensaver that decoded signals while you were not using your machine. Your computer helped to illuminate the mysteries of the universe while you were having a good time in the bathroom.

I don't know if the project is still active, but taking advantage of the computer's millions of time-outs was fucking awesome. Even if preparing coffee just takes two minutes, hours are made out of minutes and if a million computers work every day during that two minutes, you have more than 33,000 hours, almost four years of everyday work. It's estimated that there are a billion computers working worldwide.

OK, we're talking shit. Those calculations are like thinking that if you collect all the coins that people lose on the beach you won't have to work again in your entire life--neither you nor your children. But those lost coins…nobody is going to find them ALL. It's the same with time. We misspend it. We watch stupid TV shows, we talk about weather, or we google image search wrinkled meatloaf just because. We misspend it. That's all.

That said, how much time have you spent last week on one of these "social networks"? I'm sure that it's less than a year ago but, still, you've spent some time. No doubt. And I'm sure too that you haven't done anything useful with it, because that's not what they're made for. Instead, you've been opening fortune cookies or figuring out what band of the 90s best represents your soul. That's OK but if what you want is losing time like a pro, enter Facebook's group The Lying Down Game. The game consists of taking photos lying on the floor, feet pointing down and your arms on both sides. "You must be as if you were standing on your feet," says creator Gary Clarkson, a tile seller from the south of England.

Gary says that at the beginning, this was just a game between him and his friends: they asked the first jerk they saw on the street to lie down on the floor to see what happened. Over time they began to take photos in action and one day, one of them had the brilliant idea of creating a group in Facebook. Suddenly, it all exploded. As I'm writing this, the group has more than 43,000 associates and there are 10,047 photos of people looking like assholes in the strangest places you can imagine. I bet that if you look for it right now, there will be many more. We could start calculating our lost time again, but it would be pointless. Soon, it will amount to centuries.

JUANJO VILLALBA