Digital Dilemma

It's obvious that I haven't posted in a while. Why, you wonder? Well, several reasons, actually. The semester has begun, I have four preps including one new class, and I'm a little stressed. But those are not the main reasons. Actually, I'm having a digital dilemma.

Facebook. Twitter. Blogs. Text Messages. The Internet . . . . All of them were vying for my attention, and I noticed that I wasn't always really in control of how much time I spent online. I'd get on to check Facebook, and before I knew it half an hour was gone. One blog would lead to another, one website to another, and before I knew it another half hour was gone. It was as if I were giving away little bits of my life without consciously making the decision that those activities were worth the sacrifice of time. Also, something's gotta be wrong when you start evaluating every life experience in terms of whether it'll make a great tweet or a cryptic status update.

Additionally, I began to feel a low-level of stress (the kind with physical symptoms) that I believe was a result of being constantly "in touch." There were always badges telling me I had messages or that someone had posted on my wall or that someone else wanted to follow me on Twitter. Even when I didn't want to check my iphone I felt compelled to. Compelled. Isn't that a characteristic of addiction?

So, I've backed off. I leave my iphone in my purse. On the weekends I turn off alerts and avoid my laptop. At first, it was hard, and it embarasses me to say that. But now, it's much easier. I forget about being connected for hours at a time. I feel better both physically and mentally, and I get a lot more done.

I haven't decided yet how dis-connected I want to be, ultimately. I have a community of online friends that I enjoy, but I also have a life that I want to live authentically and with purpose. I'm in the process of figuring it all out. Comments and suggestions would be most welcome.

Bye, Bye BlackBerry

A little over a week ago I upgraded from a BlackBerry to an iPhone. Of course, I love my new iPhone. With all those great apps, it's just plain fun to use. But that's not the main reason I'm liking it so much better than my BlackBerry. It has to do, you see, with that little red blinking light.

With the BlackBerry, every time I'd get a message--text or email--that little red light would start blinking. And, of course, I'd feel compelled to check it. That red light was a tyrant. The really bad thing was that it blinked for every message. You couldn't set it to distinguish between a text message (which I did want to know about because it was usually from my husband or kids) and an email (which I didn't always want to be alerted of, especially because a lot of emails on my HU account were "colleagues" emails which often had nothing to do with me, at least not in any immediate sense, or because I didn't always want to handle student emails on my off time but after having read them I couldn't quit thinking about them; and emails received through my yahoo account were mostly things I didn't want to have to sort through in my work account, like confirmations of orders or newsletters, i.e. nothing I needed to be "notified" about).

Now, on my iPhone, I'm still alerted when I have a text message; however, although I have ready access to my email accounts, there is no immediate alert. I forget about my email for hours at a time and check it only when I feel like it. In my quest for simplification, I'd thought of doing away with mobile email access, just because of the control it seemed to exert over me and the subsequent rise in stress level, but I hesitated to do so because having immediate access to email has often saved me a lot of time and trouble.

iPhone to the rescue . . .

Just for Fun

Amen, Alex

Continuing my simplifying theme, here's a great blog post from Alex.

Enjoy.

Then let me know what you think.

Facefast

Technology in the Balance

I'm no opponent of technology. I blog. I twitter. I Facebook. I'm thankful I didn't have to research my dissertation without the help of electronic databases, and being able to consult with my advisor by email saved me many trips to Oxford or at least many days waiting on snail-mail. And how would I make it without a microwave and a crockpot? (Not to mention those awesome technologies like electricity and running water. But I digress.)

However.

I do worry sometimes what all this technology is doing to our culture. Doomsdayers prophesy the end of the printed book. Students would rather watch the movie than read the novel. Nobody writes real letters any more. We listen to music through plugs in our ears rather than in concert halls. We seem to be losing a sense of community.

I read Neil Postman's Technopoly last week, and in it he explores the effect technologies have on cultures, how they change them by their mere existence. He doesn't advocate going back to the Stone Age, but he does propose some strategies for "resistance fighters":

Those who resist the American Technopoly are people

--who pay no attention to a poll unless they know what questions were asked and why;

--who refuse to accept effiency as the pre-eminent goal of human relations;

--who have freed themselves from the belief in the magical power of numbers, do not regard calculation as an adequate substitute for judgment, or precision as a synonym for truth;

--who refuse to allow psychology or any "social science" to pre-empt the language and thought of common sense;

--who are, at least, suspicious of the idea of progress, and who do not confuse information with understanding;

--who do not regard the aged as irrelevant;

--who take seriously the meaning of family loyalty and honor, and who, when they "reach out and touch someone," expect that person to be in the same room;

--who take the great narratives of religion seriously and do not believe that science is the only system of thought capable of producing truth;

--who know the difference between the sacred and the profane, and who do not wink at tradition for modernity's sake;

--who admire technological ingenuity but do not think it represents the highest possible form of human achievement.

Wow. I think he's got something there.

What I'm Reading Now

"Postman (Conscientious Objections, 1988, etc.) once more cuts across the grain as an important critic of our national culture, this time arguing that America has become the world's first 'totalitarian technocracy'--otherwise known as a 'Technopoly.'' Postman starts out from the long view, showing that while every human culture becomes 'tool-using,' the use of those tools doesn't necessarily change that culture's beliefs, ideology, or world view.

In 'technocracy,' however (for us, this stage began to burgeon in the industrial 19th century), there's a change: tools (they're now called 'technology') begin to alter the culture instead of just being used by it: 'tools...attack the culture. They bid to become the culture.'' And technocracy becomes Technopoly when tools win the battle for dominance and become the sole determiners of a culture's purpose and meaning, and in fact of its very way of knowing and thinking--or of not thinking. The tools, in other words, come not only to use us but to define what we are--which is 'why in a Technopoly there can be no transcendent sense of purpose of meaning, no cultural coherence.'

So desolate a view of generalized inversion and ideological collapse fails to subdue either Postman's humane and faithful energy or his unflagging quickness of mind as he travels from Copernicus, Descartes, and Francis Bacon on through discussions of modern bureaucracy, concepts of worker 'management,' the intellectual hollowness of social 'science' and its monster-children of poll- taking and IQ testing--these and others (schools, TV, the computer 'culture') all being 'technologies' that in fact are 'without a moral center,' yet ones that we insistently revere and haplessly measure ourselves by, because 'we have become blind to the ideological meaning of our technologies.'

Amusing, learned, and prickling with intelligence, Postman easily outclasses the Allan Bloomians in the grave work of showing how it is that we've now stumbled our way into 1984--and offers, at end, some modest suggestions as to what to do about it. "