Technology is bloody great, isn’t it? I absolutely love my Macbook, my iPhone, ubiquitous connectivity via 3G and wifi, the ability to be plugged-in 24-7.
But more and more, actually taking a step back from our hyperconnected lives and simply unplugging can be be a Good Thing.
If you’ve not already done so, I recommend reading John’s recent 2 day experiment to try leading his highly-connected, highly computer-dependent life without his PC, and Iain’s experience of Mental Detox Week last year. Or Lucy Kellaway’s Before Personal Computers experiment. You get the idea.
Adrian Hon and Naomi Alderman spoke about this at GeeKyoto, positing the notion of a secular sabbath – one day of the week when you unplug and step off the grid for 24 hours. Whilst orthodox Jews observance of the sabbath (all work is forbidden, no use of electricity, cars, telephones etc) is in order to devote the day to prayer, the original focus of the secular sabbath was saving energy. But it’s also a way to have one day a week where you’re free from the distractions of your hyperconnected life to truly experience the offline world (cynics might call this Real Life).
I’ve been thinking a lot about the tension between the awesome benefits of technology and hyperconnectivity, and the sheer information overload that comes with it. That sinking feeling when you see the number of unread items in your RSS reader or inbox. That pile of photos waiting in iPhoto to be uploaded to Flickr and tagged. Those delicious links you bookmarked but still haven’t got round to reading. The backlog goes on.
But the idea of a backlog isn’t anything new – To-Do lists with endless un-done tasks have been around for ages, it’s just that what we’re not keeping up with is changing (and arguably accelerating as the sheer pace of available information speeds up).
What I think’s more interesting is the tension between simultaneous use of technology and our real-time real-life experiences. When you’re so busy trying to take photos that you spend more of your time behind the camera trying to capture where you are and what you’re seeing and doing, that you don’t really experience it. When you’re at a conference, talk or seminar, and you’re so busy trying to live-blog or tweet it that you simply don’t have the mental capacity to really digest what’s being said (the same arguably goes for lofi notetaking, so even when you’re scribbling in your moleskine, you’re still not 100% there in the moment)
The idea of continuous partial attention is fascinating, and there’s lots of different schools of thought about how our constant multitasking is affecting our brains and the way we process information. But leaving that aside, however we manage multitasking, it’s hard to avoid the fact that when we’re doing two things at once, we’re less able to truly focus on the experience of the here and now.
Missing the here and now?
As I mentioned above, even this isn’t exactly new – people have been taking holiday snaps for years, and note taking is hardly a new art. But technology facilitates this in such a way that the sheer volume of opportunities for lifecasting or capturing information are more than ever before:
As we progress through our short span here on this planet, living our lives and documenting them along the way, we may be forgetting…for moments at least…how to actually live. And living, like it or not, means that sometimes we need to disconnect, put the camera down, and enjoy a moment for once.
I’m incredibly guilty of this. One of the most frequent tips for SXSWi n00bs was to leave the damn laptop at home, not only because you’ll avoid having to lug it around, but because you’ll get so much more out of the panels if you’re actually there in the here and now, rather than frantically trying to capture what’s being said to be the first one to blog it (or bitching about it on the Twitter backchannel!). Although there’s another school of thought on this entirely, the subject of another post, methinks.
More than ever I think the idea of a secular sabbath is bloody appealing. Or just putting the damn camera down and experiencing the here and now. After all, what use is a perfect record of our experiences, if we never really got to experience them in the first place?
Great post, Katy.
When I go on holiday, I have this thing about not taking too many photos / videos and instead, trying to take in as much with my five senses as possible and creating memories that I can describe, instead of relying on photos and videos.
I often wonder when you see people who’ve uploaded huge photos albums of their holidays on Facebook / Flickr if they’ve actually experienced the holiday and actually gotten amongst it or if they’ve just been stuck behind a camera the whole time.
Great post, Katy.
When I go on holiday, I have this thing about not taking too many photos / videos and instead, trying to take in as much with my five senses as possible and creating memories that I can describe, instead of relying on photos and videos.
I often wonder when you see people who’ve uploaded huge photos albums of their holidays on Facebook / Flickr if they’ve actually experienced the holiday and actually gotten amongst it or if they’ve just been stuck behind a camera the whole time.
Absolutely – completely agree. People seem to want to go from being participants to observers/chroniclers – preferring to tell people about the experience rather than experiencing the experience. As Le’Nise says, one should use all senses available to truly live in the moment.