So What, Who Cares (vol 1, issue 12) Why you'll hear more about technology sabbaticals
My entire professional sector turned the dial up to eleven today, so I feel like it's a good time to revisit the topic of digital sabbaticals.
As far back as 2012, the New York Times was running articles like "Digital Devices Deprive Brain of Needed Downtime," reporting:
“Almost certainly, downtime lets the brain go over experiences it’s had, solidify them and turn them into permanent long-term memories,” said Loren Frank, assistant professor in the department of physiology at the university, where he specializes in learning and memory. He said he believed that when the brain was constantly stimulated, “you prevent this learning process.”
Alert readers -- the ones who have not been plugged into Twitter since its launch, one presumes -- will recall that this story coincided with the rise of books alleging that constant connectivity and/or the Internet were making us dumb for any of the following reasons: we're not connecting deeply with other people; we skim, rather than deeply engage with a text; we are being subtly (or not so subtly) steered into an informational silo that doubles as a collection of lucrative sales leads; multitasking (as is common for digital habitues who tab through different sites) is terrible for your memory.
Also, being constantly plugged in is making us fat.
The earnest, white-collar panic that we're thumb-typing ourselves into idiocy has not abated. Companies trying to maintain a competitive edge have no-email Fridays.
People fret that our brains are rewarding the digital interaction to the point where our ability to read social cues and connect with others is atrophying.
People fret that parents are neglecting their children in favor of their smartphone.
And tech professionals began professionally unplugging, then coming back from the wilderness to share their perspectives. From lifestyle bloggers urging a "National Day of Unplugging" to erstwhile social media execs promoting a book on technology sabbaths, there is emerging a narrative of tech professionals saying, "Trust -- this is something to be concerned about."
Here are the takeaways from some of the abstainers' experiences of tech hiatuses:
"Taking some time off provides useful perspective on what's awaiting you when you come back," said one after a month-long hiatus from the Internet.
"Chunks of time off are critical to both renewal and work itself" said another person after his ten-day sabbatical.
After a year offline, Paul Miller of the Verge discovered that basically, his big problem wasn't the Internet, it was his own self-sabotaging tendencies. Mat Honan at Wired (and his headline writer) told readers the same thing: "It's not technology. It's you."
The latest entry in the "I unplugged and came out the other end a wiser man" genre, Grist's David Roberts, noticed the link between the growing number of "mindfulness" gurus and happiness consultants and an always-plugged-in culture.
He also noticed that there's a growing number of skeptics turning their gimlet-eyed gazes to the notion of digital detoxes, because simply unplugging from the always-on nature of the Internet doesn't fix larger cultural practices:
As author, activist, and documentary filmmaker Astra Taylor argues in her rousing new book, The People’s Platform, discourse about online technologies almost always elides “the thorny issue of the larger social structures in which we and our technologies are embedded.”
Because most Web services are “free”—that is, supported by advertising—their very survival depends on distracting and bewitching their users. Silicon Valley software engineers design apps that way on purpose; they’re quite clever at it. Because America’s culture of professional overwork and exhaustion is unrestrained by workplace regulations or conventions governing e-mail, unceasing connectivity has become an unspoken job requirement. Because social groups coalesce and plan online, even brief screenless periods breed FOMO, the fear of missing out.
There’s only so much any individual can do in the face of these forces.
The New Yorker basically said the same thing when addressing the folly of disengaging from what is essentially real life:
Unplugging from devices doesn’t stop us from experiencing our lives through their lenses, frames, and formats. We are only ever tourists in the land of no technology, our visas valid for a day or a week or a year, and we travel there with the same eyes and ears that we use in our digital homeland.
Clearly, the merits of a digital detox are still up for debate.
So what? Now that two big trends -- wearables and the quantified self -- are getting a boost from Apple, expect to read a lot about the notion of how to mediate technology in an era where the very beats of your heart can be turned into saleable data you don't own.
Who cares? Are you a software developer hoping to enable the notion of mindfulness and/or mediated breaks from technology? Are you a consultant who wants to tell other people how to manage their digital lives for maximum productivity and happiness? Are you someone who maybe wants one family dinner where someone's not on Twitter the whole time? Are you someone who is a tad worried about your relationship to technology? Then maybe you do.
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SAMCRO rides again! Yep, the premiere is Tuesday, 10 p.m. EDT/PDT. Expect the intrepid Philip Mozolak and I to have our recap/reaction podcast up for you by Thursday. If you're rolling your eyes over a little biker TV show, then ... um, read a book except about that same show?
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Do you feel like you need a break after reading about technology sabbaticals? I wouldn't blame you. But before you go, if you like So What, Who Cares, please tell your pals to subscribe. Thanks!