To refresh your memory, here’s my “sum the sum” from part 5 of my summary of Hamlet’s Blackberry:
- 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.
Lets get started with part 6 of my multi-part summary of William Powers’ book Hamlet’s BlackBerry: Building a Good Life in the Digital Age.
On page 63, Powers suggests that if we know what to look for, we can see a backlash forming against digital busyness. Here’s how Powers describes this backlash:
There’s a feeling, an impulse that surfaces regularly now [in response to digital busyness] in all kinds of situations, personal and professional. It’s the desire for a reprieve, a break from the digital crowd. It’s in the weary comments of friends, neighbors, and colleagues about overflowing inboxes and children who can’t be pried from their screens. It’s the immense popularity of yoga and other meditation practices [talked about earlier], which now serve as useful, albeit temporary, respites from digital busyness. It’s in the Slow Life Movement—slow food, slow parenting, slow travel, [even slow sex]—with its valuable message that everything has simply gotten too fast.
So, here’s a great suggestion for philanthropists concerned with fighting digital busyness: promote and support the Slow Life Movement. Powers goes on to talks about what he calls “unplugged vacations” or even “eco-vacations”: “travel to extremely remote locations” (quoting Powers). My trip to cruise the waters of Belize on a catamaran (talked about earlier) would be an example. Consider this headline from 08.16.12:
LA Restaurant Offers Discount to Phone-free Diners
Here’s a quote from the above article:
A Los Angeles restaurant is offering a deal to customers who agree to look at their fellow diners instead of their phone screens. Eva Restaurant is giving a 5 percent discount to customers who will leave their cellphones with staff when they are seated.
I wish conference organizers would do the same: offer a discount if participants would leave their phones at the door. I went to a workshop the other day and half of the people sitting at my table (all under the age of 30 mind you) were constantly texting during the presentation. It was highly distracting because attention was inappropriately focused. If you wish to encourage Executive Functioning (which includes appropriately focusing attention), you must model it (or, if need be, demand it). Heck, I’d pay more to go to a “screen free” workshop. The point here is that philanthropists can play a role in promoting the Slow Life Movement and Screen-free Events. As an example, we ask participants at our RYOL Lectures to text and talk outside the meeting room, much in the same way the meeting facility personnel ask participants to smoke outside the building (per local health codes). Clearly texting and driving is a huge public health and safety concern these days; maybe we should also look at other forms of public texting. Recall this headline from part 5:
Teen Girl Falls in Open Manhole While Texting
On page 67, Powers mentions a non-profit group by the name of Information Overload Research Group. According to Powers, the explicit goal of this group is to fight “excessive digital connectedness.” Pulling from information coming from such research groups, Powers makes an interesting connection worth reflecting on. Lets listen in as Powers tells us that with the alcohol industry,
at least there’s a genuine distinction between pushing alcohol, which the industry does, and pushing alcoholism, which it doesn’t. In promoting a lifestyle of never-ending connectedness, the technology business (and Microsoft is hardly alone in this) is encouraging the unhealthy extreme, the digital equivalent of alcoholism. Perpetually connected equals perpetually zoned out, and nobody knows it better than those [technology] companies. In studies of workplace overload, the most shocking statistics and anecdotes—employees so distracted [texting, playing Angry Birds, and updating Facebook], they can barely think—come from the technology sector.
Scary stuff! Powers offers up a powerful frame here: hyper connectedness as a form of intoxication or addiction. Thus the term “CrackBerry.” During his RYOL Lecture last February, 2012, Nicholas Carr asked us, “Do you know where technology executives send their kids for school?” He answers thus: “To Montessori School where there is very little technology.” Why? Because technology executives know that hyper technology and hyper connectedness could rot your brain. Technology executives want technology for the masses, but not their own families. Rather telling would’t you say?
But is all of this really new? Powers would say no. In the following quote, Powers puts into perspective the historical context holding new forms of human connectedness:
New modes of connecting always create new ways for individuals to create and prosper, and for the collective advancement of humanity. At the same time, there’s a sense of life, especially the inner life, being thrown out of balance. It happened in the sixteenth century, after the arrival of print technology, and again in the middle of the nineteenth century, when the railroad and telegraph appeared. There are many other examples [like Sumerian clay tablets or even number systems]. The mind has been on a long journey, and along the way there have always been a few individuals who have arrived at valuable insights about how best to manage that journey.
I’ll end here. In part 7 we’ll start looking at the individuals Powers has discovered who have the ability to offer insights concerning new technological revolutions. So, here’s my sum the sum for part 6:
- There seems to be a backlash forming against digital busyness, a backlash that philanthropists could potentially support.
- Generally, one of the names this backlash goes by is the Slow Life Movement: slow food, slow parenting, slow travel, even slow sex.
- Here’s the overarching message of the Slow Life Movement: Life has simply gotten too fast.
- Non-profit groups such as Information Overload Research Group, have the specific mission to fight excessive digital connectedness.
- Whereas the alcohol industry attempts to maintain a boundary between promoting alcohol consumption (which it does) and alcoholism (which it does not), the technology industry maintains no such boundary and, as a result, promotes the digital equivalent (e.g., hyper connectedness) of alcoholism.
- The technology industry regularly studies “digital alcoholism” and finds that it greatly undermines productivity costing the US millions if not billions of dollars in lost productivity.
- Technological revolutions have occurred throughout history—clay tablets, numbers, books, the printing press, railroads, the telegraph.
- It’s not necessarily a technological revolution that creates upheaval in our lives; it’s our relationship and attitude toward that revolution.
- Unique individuals throughout time have offered up helpful suggestions concerning how we might appropriately view and relate to new technological revolutions.
Stay tuned for part 7. 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.
