Strategically Communicating

In Nicholas Carr’s clarion call about the Internet, he says psychological research has proved that “frequent interruptions scatter our thoughts, weaken our memory and make us tense and anxious.” (The Shallows 2011, p. 132) He then points out that we “ask the Internet to keep interrupting us in ever more and different ways.” (Carr, p. 134)

One parallel development during the same time frame as the rise of the Internet has been the rise in antidepressant use in the US.  According to a 2011 report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), antidepressant use has soared 400% in the past 20 years:

Eleven percent of Americans ages 12 years and older took antidepressants during the 2005-08 study period, the authors write. They add that though the majority of antidepressants were taken to treat depression, the drugs also can be used for anxiety disorders and other conditions.        (http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/health/story/health/story/2011-10-19)

According to a government study, antidepressants have become the most commonly prescribed drugs in the United States. In its study, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention looked at 2.4 billion drugs prescribed in visits to doctors and hospitals in 2005. Of those, 118 million were for antidepressants. (http://articles.cnn.com/2007-07-09/health/antidepressants)

To date, no U.S. study has causally linked anxiety and depression with use of the internet.  Even these articles consider other possibilities for the huge increase in antidepressant use, such as the economy, job loss and pharmaceutical advertising.  However, as emerging data describe increasing pressure from technology, can we make the leap and consider that the internet materially contributes to the problem?

This question could sound weird now, but there could be a time in the future where this question will not seem ridiculous or funny. In this book, Carr has described the Internet we know now and its effects on our brain, but where would this book stand in the future when we can smell the Internet?

Recently Time’s website reported that a company called Chaku Perfume has designed a new application to send smells via iPhone. An attachment made up of an atomizer and a small tank attached to an iPhone’s dock port, which allows a person to send smells to a friend who has the same application. http://techland.time.com/2012/10/17/new-app-sends-smells-via-iphone/

Developing the electric smell has been quite the project for many.  In 2011 UC San Diego developed a prototype for Samsung – a  “smell-o-vision” device that could emit up to 10,000 odors. It has not been released in the market yet  but it may be there soon.

http://www.kpbs.org/news/2011/jun/27/smell-o-vision-smells-sweet-san-diego-researcher/

Also, in 2001 DigiScents developed a computer device called The iSmell, which connects to a personal computer via USB. It was designed to emit a smell when a user visited a web site or opened an email.

http://www.howstuffworks.com/internet-odor1.htm

Moreover, Japanese researchers are working on a 3D television that lets viewers experience smells, to be released by 2020.  http://betanews.com/2005/08/19/3d-tv-with-touch-smell-by-2020/

These are few examples to make us ask ourselves the question: are we prepared for such a revolution, with its advantages and disadvantages?

As an Internet user, how would this feature change your surfing habits?
How would we utilize this feature in journalism?

This weekend as I was locked in my usual vortex of distraction, I stumbled upon a friend’s Facebook post of this wonderful presentation by Joe Kraus. Needing to tear myself away from the pressing matters of the internet to make lunch for my two daughters, I opted to place my laptop at a strategic location on the counter and watch/listen to Kraus’s intriguing 15-minute video while making sandwiches. How sadly ironic to listen to a techie’s critique of our “culture of distraction” while perpetuating it in this way.

While much of Kraus’s presentation consists of preaching to the choir and making a lot of the same observations that Nicholas Carr highlights in his book “The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains,” what I appreciated about Kraus’s message is that he concluded it with what seem to be some fairly simple and reasonable practices for moderating our ever-distracted and technology-saturated lives. Kraus suggests we “take a weekly holiday” from our devices, meaning no screens for a day, and he also says to “ACTIVELY TRAIN your long-form attention and mindfulness”  through a calming walk or meditation, or any type of “DAILY practice of slowing down.”

I think Kraus definitely has the right idea in acknowledging that we ARE losing something important in today’s culture of distraction, and I like the solutions he offers. But I want to hear more ideas. I want more solutions.

What else can we do to quiet our minds and strengthen our real, human relationships?

A recent New York Times article, published on November 1 of this year, entitled “Technology Changing How Students Learn, Teachers Say” echoes exactly what we have been saying in class the past few weeks and what Carr argues in The Shallows: Technology is changing our brains and is generally making attention spans shorter. The article creates a conversation in which many teachers note how their students are unable to stay focused in class, how they as teachers feel increasing pressure to be entertaining and how it often seems as though there is less depth in written student work. Carr of course explains how when we are online our constant need to make decisions about what to click on distracts us from paying deep attention and how we begin to crave the constant clicking and decision making when we are offline and how this appears to be shorting society’s collective attention span.

Both of these concepts are ones we have discussed extensively in class and about which we have seen and heard of a myriad of studies and examples, but nowhere have I seen a discussion about these potential problems with the people who are most at risk: today’s youth and those in older generations who have not noticed the shift. The changes aren’t going anywhere, and neither is technology, but why aren’t those raising the concern making sure that everyone, and especially the next generation, is at least talking about the potentially monumental effects of technology on our brains?

Being able to multitask is often seen as a necessary skill set to have in our culture. I like to think that I am a strong multitasker. I juggle school with work and my home life. I continually make to do lists and work on multiple projects at a time. But at the end of the day I am often asking myself, “what did I actually accomplish today?”

When describing multitasking’s effect on people, Nicholas Carr writes that, “every time we shift our attention, our brain has to reorient itself, further taxing our mental resources” (pp.133). By living in a culture where multitasking is not only encouraged but is expected, it is difficult to break the cycle of taking too much on. This constant access to information creates opportunity for distraction and can cause individuals to overexert themselves to a point where their work suffers. Ideally, I would like to dedicate myself to one project or task at a time to ensure the highest quality of work, but I don’t see how this is even feasible in today’s culture. Our attention is constantly being pulled in different directions, and every task is a top priority. How can we not help but focus on multiple projects at  a time?

Is being a multitasker as important of a quality to have as we make it out to be? How would your work be different if you just saw one project through to completion before starting another? Is this even possible in today’s work environment?

When I finished “The Shallows,” there were some things that didn’t quite sit right with me. In order to re-learn how to focus, Carr completely disconnected himself from the Internet and sequestered himself in the mountains of Colorado. However, as someone who must rely on online news articles, blogs, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn to do my job effectively, I’ve found other, less extreme ways to stay focused on the web.

Carr mentions the way hyperlinks temp us to click on them. This insatiable need to click on links, in turn, keeps us from spending any significant time on one particular webpage or news article. We flit from one page to the next without considering anything too deeply. To countermand this problem, I usually open links in new tabs and continue reading the current page I’m on before moving on to the pages in the other tabs. With this method, I remain focused on the task at hand without losing other important or interesting information in the process. Carr also talks about the incessant need to check his email and (I think he also included) Facebook and other social networks. For me, I only check my personal Facebook and Twitter feeds at work on scheduled breaks or during lunch. It’s easy to stick to this resolution because my employer owns my work time. It would be much harder to resist checking Facebook every five minutes if I were in Carr’s shoes, writing a book on a computer in the mountains.

What techniques do you use to remain focused online? How can we, as communicators, capture our viewers’ or readers’ attention on the web?

I can’t read any more. I mean, I am capable; I know HOW to read. It’s the stuff that takes more than 20 minutes to read that loses me and I cannot finish before my mind wanders off somewhere else. According to Nicholas Carr in The Shallows, people like me are the new normal and Internet is at fault, but it may not be a bad thing.

Carr argues that it may be the book that is truly to blame for taking humans away from our natural state, and that we have simply forgotten what our natural state is. Humans used to constantly scan and shift our brains to look for threats. It’s what kept us alive. But with the creation of the book and with that deep concentration on a singular activity, reading became the norm. Thus, Carr states, it is ability to concentrate on one thing that is more unnatural to humans than our constantly flittering minds.

“In the choices we have made, consciously or not, about how we use our computers, we have rejected the intellectual tradition of solitary, single-minded concentration, the ethic that the book bestowed on us ” (Carr 2010).

Carr explains that what we are experiencing is, “in a metaphorical sense, a reversal of the early trajectory of civilization.” We are evolving certainly,  “from being cultivators of personal knowledge to being hunters and gatherers in the electronic data forest” (Carr 2010).

Do you personally feel like a cultivator of knowledge or hunter and gatherer of information? Please share.