September 28, 2016--The Cyber Effect

At the recommendation of Lynn Roth, I've been reading Mary Aiken's Cyber Effect. About the neurological and psychological effects of different levels of involvement with "screens"--computers and various kinds of mobile devices. Especially on young people where over-involvement can lead, research shows, to developmental deficits.

Aiken is not close to being a Luddite. She does see the world in many ways positively transformed by the Internet and how people access and use it.

But she does caution about excessive, mindless usage. Particularly, of video games which astonishingly gross in income more than all cable, network TV, and the movie industry combined.

On average, studies she cites, reveal that people who have smart phones--by now, nearly everyone--use them actively more than three hours a day. And, if one adds screen-time on laptops, usage among the young can reach more than eight hours a day.

Or at least that's what people say about themselves. I suspect the hours of involvement that people report is an underestimate. As when asked what TV shows they watch they are more inclined to say, "Of course, anything on PBS," when in reality they're watching the Kardashians. Or when dieting people are asked what they eat in a day they tend to leave out high-caloric snacks.

So, to check myself out and not make my own underestimation of my Internet usage--or addiction--I kept a careful and honest log of my screen time this past Saturday. Note that I'm an early riser and thus shut down my computer early as well.

4:52 a.m. for 12 minutes
8:38 a.m. for 3 minutes
11:32 a.m. for 24 minutes
2:20 p.m. for 3 minutes
4:26 p.m. for 7 minutes
5:22 p.m. for 6 minutes
5:38 p.m. for 3 minutes
6:16 p.m. for 7 minutes
7:35 p.m. for 4 minutes
8:22 p.m. for 1 minute

I checked in or did a bit of surfing 10 times during the day for a total of 70 minutes. An hour and 10 minutes--well under average.

Two more notes--

I do not have a smart phone--only a laptop--and have very few email or Facebook friends.

I think I'm happy about this. I like my quiet and privacy. But the again I feel I'm not fully participating in the 21st century.

January 16, 2016--Hooked?

For some time in this place I have written about my struggles to get comfortable with the new media. Especially "mobile devices," which I understand to mean primarily smartphones, while mobile devices down here in Florida are more walkers and wheelchairs.

I am feeling left behind as the two generations succeeding mine seem so naturally comfortable with texting, tweeting, and snap-chatting. I watch them thumbing their iPhones at preternatural speed as they dodge traffic on Broadway, while eating out, and when waiting on line to get into a club or movie.

Though viscerally discomforted by this--partly, if I'm honest, largely because this feeling of being left out is more personal than technological--I have tried to see something positive deriving from all of this hardware and software.

The amateur historian in me knows that there were similar, worrisome things said about the paradigm-shifting impact on culture, society, and the Church brought about by the Gutenberg Revolution and the resulting proliferation of books.

For the most part, that worked out well. But mobile devices that are now possessed by billions around the world and hundreds of millions mainly young people here in the United States, may be turning out to be quite a different, less benign or liberating story.

Are we seeing the emergence of a passive generation of techno-zombies hooked on connectivity?

To help sketch the extent of one aspect of this, here is an excerpt from Jacob Weisberg's essay in the most recent issue of The New York Review, "We Are Hopelessly Hooked":

Hands and minds are continuously occupied texting, e-mailing, liking, tweeting, watching YouTube videos, and playing Candy Crush. 

Americans spend an average of five and a half hours a day with digital media, more than half of that time on mobile devices, according to the research firm eMarketer. Among some groups, the numbers range much higher. In one recent survey, female students at Baylor University reported using their cell phones an average of ten hours a day. Three quarters of eighteen-to-twenty-four-year-olds say that they reach for their phones immediately upon waking in the morning. Once out of bed, we check our phones 221 times a day--an average of every 4.3 minutes--according to a UK study. 

This number may actually be too low, since people tend to underestimate their own mobile usage. In a 2015 Gallup survey, 61 percent of people said they checked their phones less frequently than others they knew. . . . 

What does it mean to shift overnight from a society in which people walk down the street looking around to one in which people walk down the street looking at machines? We wouldn't be always clutching smartphones if we didn't believe they made us safer, more productive less bored, and were useful in all the ways a computer in your pocket can be useful. 

At the same time, smartphone owners describe feeling "frustrated" and "distracted." [Though] in a 2015 Pew survey, 70 percent of respondents said their phones made them feel freer while 30 percent said they felt like a leash. Nearly half the eighteen-to-twenty-nine-year olds said they used their phones to "avoid others around you."

Weisberg then cites Sherry Turkle's book, Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in a Digital Age:

The picture she paints is both familiar and heartbreaking: parents who are constantly distracted on the playground and at the dinner table; children who are frustrated that they can't get their parents' undivided attention; gatherings where friends who are present vie for attention with virtual friends; classrooms where professors gaze out at a sea of semi-engaged multitaskers; and a dating culture in which infinite choices undermines the ability to make emotional commitments.

It does feel like a very new world. I will continue to struggle to get comfortable with it and to find good things to say about where we are headed. In the meantime I do have my books.

April 10, 2015--Ready for Your Closeup?

Though I hate the proliferation of surveillance cameras that make me feel that wherever I am under scrutiny--on the street, in my car, going through a red light, in my Manhattan apartment elevator, getting coffee at a 7-Eleven--I am having some second thoughts about being tracked and continuously videotaped.

All our traditional notions of privacy have been obliterated by these cameras, urban crowding, social networks, big data mining (check out the explosion of ads targeted to you on Facebook), and a youth culture that thrives on self-promotion and exhibitionism.

Then of course there are all the people whose smartphones are also video cameras, the hackers and, more than anything else, the various domestic surveillance programs of federal agencies such as the CIA, FBI, and especially the NSA. Pretty much everything that someone wants to know about you--from the sources and amounts of your income to your medical records to your shopping and reading habits--are readily available. Thus, though some may hate knowing this--and for whom the only alternative is to live in the North Woods off the grid--by now there is virtually nothing one can do to retain any shred of privacy.

And then there are the benefits that are less discussed--how these images and data enhance legitimate efforts by the police and justice system to keep us safe.

In the news in the last day or two are glaring examples.

First, in Boston, at the conclusion of the trial of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, with his brother one of the Boston Marathon bombers, we were reminded of how large a part surveillance cameras on the street where they placed their pressure-cooker bombs contributed to their being tracked down and apprehended in only days, which thwarted their plans to explode more bombs in New York City. Without the images of them walking calmly in lockstep toward the bomb site it would have likely taken many days or weeks to apprehend them.

And also a few days ago, in North Charleston, SC, a white policeman, Micahel Slager, was caught on a smartphone camera when he gunned down and murdered a black man, Walter Scott, who from the images it was clear was posing no threat to the officer. Without the video it is likely that it would have been easier than it will be at the eventual trial to cover up the truth of what occurred.

So how to think about this is complicated.