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elfs"All addictions are addictions of present hedonism."
Of all the analyses I've seen from regarding the Internet's strain on our attention spans, one of the many that I've heard often is that the Internet pokes at our fight or flight response. Linda Stone, who coined the term "continuous partial attention" to describe our tendency to only be partially in any moment, to have part of our attention always on the potential for asynchronous, geographically distant events that will demand more of us, has now described and documented "email apnea," the tendency of people to breathe oddly when at the computer.
Stone ascribes this phenomenon to our hairless savanna ape ancestry's readiness to respond to crises by holding our breath, jacking up our nitric acid in preparation for fight-or-flight. Email, with its unpredictable nature, creates a similar preparatory reaction in us. Omaha has long noticed that I do that even when writing for pleasure, since often I don't know what's going to come out of my fingers next, and I'm often just as thrilled or threatened as my characters as I write.
A lot of various reports (including the NPR article I linked to earlier) ascribed this almost completely to the premise of message-as-threat, but I also think that there's another reaction going on: the desperate quest for frission, which Roger Ebert so brilliant described in a recent essay, and defined as "a brief intense reaction, usually a feeling of excitement, recognition, or terror." Like a slot machine, the Internet pays off randomly, so the reward cycle isn't dependable, and so becomes more neurotic, and more effective, in its reinforcement. Gambling halls have known this for years; if you start surfing, the Internet becomes the world's biggest casino, where the price is the tick of the precious minutes remaining in your life, and the reward is a particularly amusing LOLcat.
Stone, during the course of her presentation, asks the audience how many of them are experimenting with meditation and other techniques in order to extend their attention span. A lot of folks raised their hands, and I would have been one of them.
There are, in fact, a host of new programs that are designed to prevent distraction. They're called "Freedom," "Concentration," and more esoteric names (I use the X/Emacs character sequence Control-Enter to foreground-and-lock emacs, making it the only thing I have available to me while I work. Arguably, that's pretty stupid, because emacs is perfectly capable of shelling out or launching processes stacked above itself, but in practice it seems to work for me.) The Economist magazine recently touted this new trend in its article Stay on Target, in which they outlined all of the ways that these program prevent continuous partial attention by reminding us that we have jobs to do.
Despite the popularity of these programs, Steven Pinker admonishes us that "scientists are never far from their e-mail, rarely touch paper and cannot lecture without PowerPoint." I don't know which scientists Pinker is talking to, but many of the ones I know practice a kind of networking hygiene, where they separate themselves from the Internet or use one of the programs I listed above. Most writers I know, too, find cafes without wireless in which to work.
Carr responds with this comment:
Carr has the better argument. We are not merely losing our memories by having books; we are losing our ability to think clearly and deeply. Those with deep memories are sometimes cherished-- if they can tell great stories-- and sometimes treated as somewhat freaky-- if they memorize pi to 10,000 places. Those who think deeply are already regarded as something of a strange breed, but are often cherished. The Internet, with its addictive distractions, makes it much harder to be that kind of thinker.
Of all the analyses I've seen from regarding the Internet's strain on our attention spans, one of the many that I've heard often is that the Internet pokes at our fight or flight response. Linda Stone, who coined the term "continuous partial attention" to describe our tendency to only be partially in any moment, to have part of our attention always on the potential for asynchronous, geographically distant events that will demand more of us, has now described and documented "email apnea," the tendency of people to breathe oddly when at the computer.
Stone ascribes this phenomenon to our hairless savanna ape ancestry's readiness to respond to crises by holding our breath, jacking up our nitric acid in preparation for fight-or-flight. Email, with its unpredictable nature, creates a similar preparatory reaction in us. Omaha has long noticed that I do that even when writing for pleasure, since often I don't know what's going to come out of my fingers next, and I'm often just as thrilled or threatened as my characters as I write.
A lot of various reports (including the NPR article I linked to earlier) ascribed this almost completely to the premise of message-as-threat, but I also think that there's another reaction going on: the desperate quest for frission, which Roger Ebert so brilliant described in a recent essay, and defined as "a brief intense reaction, usually a feeling of excitement, recognition, or terror." Like a slot machine, the Internet pays off randomly, so the reward cycle isn't dependable, and so becomes more neurotic, and more effective, in its reinforcement. Gambling halls have known this for years; if you start surfing, the Internet becomes the world's biggest casino, where the price is the tick of the precious minutes remaining in your life, and the reward is a particularly amusing LOLcat.
Stone, during the course of her presentation, asks the audience how many of them are experimenting with meditation and other techniques in order to extend their attention span. A lot of folks raised their hands, and I would have been one of them.
There are, in fact, a host of new programs that are designed to prevent distraction. They're called "Freedom," "Concentration," and more esoteric names (I use the X/Emacs character sequence Control-Enter to foreground-and-lock emacs, making it the only thing I have available to me while I work. Arguably, that's pretty stupid, because emacs is perfectly capable of shelling out or launching processes stacked above itself, but in practice it seems to work for me.) The Economist magazine recently touted this new trend in its article Stay on Target, in which they outlined all of the ways that these program prevent continuous partial attention by reminding us that we have jobs to do.
Despite the popularity of these programs, Steven Pinker admonishes us that "scientists are never far from their e-mail, rarely touch paper and cannot lecture without PowerPoint." I don't know which scientists Pinker is talking to, but many of the ones I know practice a kind of networking hygiene, where they separate themselves from the Internet or use one of the programs I listed above. Most writers I know, too, find cafes without wireless in which to work.
Carr responds with this comment:
Pinker says: "It’s not as if habits of deep reflection, thorough research and rigorous reasoning ever came naturally to people." Exactly. And that’s another cause for concern. Our most valuable mental habits - the habits of deep and focused thought - must be learned, and the way we learn them is by practicing them, regularly and attentively.I think this is exactly right. Just as Zimbardo points out, we are trained for "deep reflection, thorough research and rigorous reasoning," often with settings that are boring, and often by a consortium of the traditionally minded statics and the forward-looking dynamics. Both groups recognize the need for such training to overcome the tendency to adolescent hedonism or fatalism.
Carr has the better argument. We are not merely losing our memories by having books; we are losing our ability to think clearly and deeply. Those with deep memories are sometimes cherished-- if they can tell great stories-- and sometimes treated as somewhat freaky-- if they memorize pi to 10,000 places. Those who think deeply are already regarded as something of a strange breed, but are often cherished. The Internet, with its addictive distractions, makes it much harder to be that kind of thinker.
no subject
Date: 2010-06-16 04:43 am (UTC)When I first watched that video, I thought that couldn't be quite right.
Upon consideration, I realized that late-stage alcoholism, as described by AA, falls into the "positive past" frame. Even after the alcoholic realizes that every time they take a drink they get absolutely hammered and things end poorly, they harken back to the time when drinking was fun and they were capable of moderation. That's often the source of rationalizations that get them to take that first drink again.
People who have an addictive approach to work are probably in a future focused cognitive frame. Likewise for some of the people addicted to video games, if what motivates them is a drive for completion or accomplishment, even if they're not really having fun in the moment.
So psychological addictions, at the very least, are not always born from a "present hedonistic" cognitive frame.