I attended a lecture last night by Nicholas Carr, author of “The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains.” I was very interested in what he had to say because I have written about Carr before, and I have had his book on my shelf for nearly a year.
Sadly, I’ve been too distracted to read it.
And, sadly again, that’s his point.
What he says is true: The constant barrage of information via smartphone, iPad, desktop computer, laptop, iTouch, etc., is eroding our ability to concentrate. We’re reverting to cavepeople distracted by all the sights and sounds of our environment, as opposed to the erudite focusers we became after Gutenberg invented the printing press.
One of his slides gave me great pause.
People claim they check email a couple of times per hour. Once research participants were fitted with eye-tracking paraphernalia, researchers discovered they checked email 30-40 times per hour.
Yikes.
No wonder I’m not done with my dissertation yet.
To his credit, Carr identified the many ways the Internet has improved our lives, including enhanced visual-spatial skills. And he admits to being distracted as well.
Here’s the point I’ve made before: The Internet is not going away. So what do we do to maintain and improve our ability to focus?
We turn it off. Use it sparingly. Have conversations without checking email, Twitter, Facebook, texts, etc. In Carr’s words to me in the book he signed, “Stay deep.”
I’ll be looking for a nice WiFi-disabled cave to hang out in while I finish my dissertation.
I forced myself to put my phone down after the lecture let out. Then 13 seconds later I forced myself to put it down again. This continued for quite some time.
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I was surprised you didn’t tweet about it.
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I saw this happening with me, and decided to give myself a goal of reading 100 books in a year to combat it. I was too “distracted” to make it to 100, but I made it to about 80 books (some of them hefty, non-fiction that took considerable focus) and man did I feel good about it. It took some focus away from digital media.
It was hard to do – I’ve noticed without that goal this year I’m reading less, and checking Twitter more often. Maybe I need to re-set my goals…
Love your blog entries.
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Good for you! I’m looking forward to finishing my dissertation so that I can start reading for pure pleasure again. I have a huge stack of books — real paper books — clamoring for my attention.
And thanks for reading!
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This is why the beach house has no phone, no cable, no internet. We’re thinking of installing a waterproof box at the end of the driveway for guests’ cellphones and Blackberries. Think that would be rude?
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No. I think it’s necessary. Do you have a landline for emergencies? I have to have connectivity, but I also have to not have it sometimes.
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WHen he mentioned the app “Antisocial,” I was blown away. But it actually sounds useful?
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Yes, and ironic. An app to tell you to get away from apps.
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I wrote a pretty “shallow” review of the book on my own blog (http://www.swanzun.com/blog/?p=104). My thesis is centered around distraction and it is proving to be more difficult to write than I ever imagined because of the very fact that I keep getting distracted.
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We made a humongous mistake this vacation – bringing the laptop. Actually both vacations – my husband is a worse offender of the “NO INTERNET/NO CELL PHONE” rule whipping his out constantly to “just check on one or two thing. Mary, I own my own business!” Ugh. The whole point of spending $$$ on a European vacation in the middle of nowhere is to NOT have our tech ‘fix’ for 10 days. At least, it was until 2007…
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Yeah, if you’re going to spend that much money, you should get the maximum vacation feeling — not possible if you are connected.
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