To refresh your memory, here’s my “sum the sum” from part 4 of my summary of Hamlet’s Blackberry:
- Here’s a powerful Powers “bottom line”: Digital consciousness can’t tolerate three minutes of pure focus.
- Being able to appropriately focus attention for extended periods of time is one of the Executive Function Skills.
- Executive Functioning tends to flourish in “Airplane Space Experiences”
- The world of Endless Potential Tasks (digital) stands in stark contrast to the world of Airplane Space Experiences (analog).
- Airplane Space Experiences tend to contain and reveal object relations, and, in turn, wholes or gestalts.
- The world of Endless Potential Tasks tends to be the world of objectification where objects are devoid of relationships and are experienced in isolation away from wholes or gestalts.
- Splendid isolation and development of Executive Functioning tend to go hand in hand.
- Splendid isolation can be found on the water, in the air, in nature, in rural areas, and even in meditation.
- Philanthropists should endeavor to make these respite opportunities available.
- Respite opportunities are like rich soil to growing Executive Functioning.
Lets get started with part 5 of my multi-part summary of William Powers’ book Hamlet’s BlackBerry: Building a Good Life in the Digital Age.
On page 49, Powers gets to the crux of the matter in this quote:
When a crowd [or mass] adopts a point of view en masse, all critical thinking effectively stops [my emphasis]. The maximalist dogma is particularly difficult to challenge because it’s all about joining the crowd, so it’s self-reinforcing. There [is] an inexorability to it, a sense that if you don’t hop on the digital bandwagon and stay there, you’d be left behind.
Powers is essentially talking about FOMO: fear of missing out (which I mentioned earlier). As I argued earlier, the fear associated with “missing out” or “being left behind” is a fear born out of the object-loving mid-brain not able to interact with the meaning-loving upper brain. Only crossover people will have the ability (and heightened responsibility) to point out that mid brain is not talking to upper brain. Digital natives will know no other state. Digital natives will view this state (e.g., mid brain cut off from upper brain and critical thinking) much the same way a fish views water, that is, a natural state. I don’t mean to be an alarmist but my sense is that crossover people have a huge responsibility to make mid-to-upper brain gaps transparent before it’s too late. It is very much like preserving a language before the last speaker of that language passes away. In the not-too-distant future, mid brain naturally bridged to upper brain will be a footnote within the story of human development. Once the frontal lobes of crossover people are gone, they’re gone and can no longer be used as models of natural mid-to-upper brain bridging. Just saying….
Powers now turns to the topic of ADT: attention deficit trait. As you will see, Powers’ description of ADT sounds a lot like ADHD: attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. Allow me to quote Powers at length because I think this is a rather revealing passage given that we seem to be in the midst of an ADHD epidemic:
From the earliest days of computers, there have been worries about the effects these [digital] technologies would have on the human mind. Back in the 1970s, the futurist Alvin Toffler coined the term “information overload” to capture what he believed would happen to the human consciousness as connective technologies [like the Internet] brought the world to our mental doorstep. In the last decade, the phrase has gained new currency, mainly through media reports about novel psychological conditions and behaviors that some experts attribute to digital overload. They include attention deficit trait, a malady related to the like-named bane of modern childhood. According to Edward Hallowell, the psychiatrist who first described it, ADT is “like a traffic jam in your mind.” Symptoms include “distractibility, restlessness, a sense of ‘gotta go, gotta rush, gotta run around’ and impulsive decision-making, because you have so many things to do.”
OK, last week I went to a workshop on Executive Functions put on by Laurie Dietzel, co-author of the 2008 book Late, Lost, and Unprepared: A Parents’ Guide to Helping Children with Executive Functioning. What Powers describes (using Hallowell’s work as a backdrop) agrees with what Dietzel said are characteristics of poor executive functioning. And, in turn, poor executive functioning is closely associated with autism spectrum disorders. Is the advance of digital technologies totally to blame? Probably not, but either it is a big part directly, or it maps a big part for sure. Whether we are looking at cause or correlation we should stop and take notice because something big is shifting. Again, one billion Facebook users as of October, 2012. Need I say more? On page 51, Powers gives us this “take home” statement:
If we’ve learned anything in the last decade about technology and human interaction, it’s that as screen time rises, direct human-to-human interaction falls off proportionally.
Simply, as direct human-to-human interaction falls off, so too Bowlbian attachment relationships. As Powers puts it on page 53, in a digital world, “a person is just another person, and there are so many of those….” According to Bowlbian attachment theory, when a person is “just another person,” then there is little chance they can be viewed and related to as a primary attachment figure. Infants will orient themselves toward their mother’s voice when only weeks old; not toward the voice of “just another person.”
On page 55, Powers mentions this—believe it or not—real headline:
Teen Girl Falls in Open Manhole While Texting
The above headline alludes to a topic that would take us to far afield but I thought I should mention it: cognitive maps. In mentioning the above headline Powers correctly observes that as kids spend more and more time in front of screens (like I’m doing right now), they become “barley aware of the third dimension” (quoting Powers). It would take too long to explain but spending large amounts of time away from or not aware of the third dimension will result in compromised (what Bowlby called) Inner Working Models. Recall that open and flexible Inner Working Cognitive Models are a part of having well developed Executive Function Skills. Sad to say but the fields of spatial behavior and spatial cognition were big back in the 1970s and 1980s. Bowlby pulled extensively from the spatial behavior and spatial cognition literature. (Bowlby was also greatly influenced by the work of Jean Piaget in the area of cognitive models.) These fields have all but fallen off the academic radar screen. Too bad really because if there ever was a time we needed these fields it is now. I’m aware of very little work that looks at how spending extensive time in the largely two dimensional world of the screen affects the development of cognitive models. We use cognitive models for such EF skills as planning, running “what if” scenarios, empathy, perspective taking, etc. Powers observes that kids who spend extensive amounts of time in the two dimensions of screen worlds, are often kids who are “increasingly unfamiliar with the natural world” of three dimensions (quoting Powers). Powers mentions Nature Deficit Disorder, a tip of the hat toward Richard Louv and his 2008 book Last Child in the Woods—Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder. In part 4, I mentioned that our Foundation made a grant to the Children & Nature Network. Richard is one of the chief animators behind C&NN.
Let me end with this quote by Powers on page 57 that I feel both speaks to Bowlbian attachment relationships and spatial cognition:
[T]o share time and [three dimensional] space with others in the fullest sense, you have to disconnect from the [two dimensional] global crowd. You have to create one of those gaps where thoughts, feelings, and [attachment] relationships take root. And for a good [digital] maximalist, there’s nothing worse than a gap.
In part 4, I mentioned that our Foundation’s grant to Children & Nature Network was about creating a booklet that encourages families to go out into nature together. Although not specifically mentioned, I would suggest that this booklet encourages families to go out into nature as a way of finding and going into the gap that Powers talks about.
Here’s my sum the sum for part 5:
- Powers states: When a crowd adopts a point of view en masse, all critical thinking effectively stops.
- In the not-too-distant future, mid brain naturally bridged to upper brain will be a footnote within the story of human development.
- According to psychiatrist Edward Hallowell, ADT (attention deficit trait) is “like a traffic jam in your mind.”
- Symptoms of ADT include distractibility, restlessness, and impulsive decision-making, all characteristics of poor executive functioning (according to Laurie Dietzel).
- According to Powers, as time spent in front of a screen increases, face-to-face relationships fall off proportionally.
- As direct human-to-human interaction falls off, so too Bowlbian attachment relationships.
- Kids who spend extensive amounts of time in the two dimensions of screen worlds, are often kids who are “increasingly unfamiliar with the natural world” of three dimensions (quoting Powers).
- Reducing experience from three dimensions down to just two will adversely affect the development of Inner Working Cognitive Models rendering them less flexible and less open.
- As two dimensional screen life goes up, so will what Richard Louv calls Nature Deficit Disorder.
- To fight Nature Deficit Disorder, groups like Children & Nature Network encourage families to give up some screen time and to simply enjoy each other out in nature.
Stay tuned for part 6. I’ll try to get it out as soon as I possibly can. In the mean time, consider reading Powers’ book Hamlet’s Blackberry. If you have read Hamlet’s Blackberry, feel free to leave your comments concerning the information that Powers presents.
