贬补尘濒别迟鈥檚 BlackBerry
Concerns about the Internet鈥檚 harmful effects on our brains and lives have gone 鈥� well, viral. These days, click on any screen 鈥� or open any print publication 鈥� and chances are you鈥檒l find something about how constant connectivity is fracturing our attention, addicting us to a steady stream of input, interfering with human contact, and destroying our ability to focus deeply. A recent front page headline in The New York Times screamed, 鈥淗ooked on Gadgets, and Paying a Mental Price: A Toll on Family Life, and Studies Find a Loss of Focus.鈥�
William Powers, a former staff writer for The Washington Post whose focus is media and technology, became alarmed at how the omnipresent tug of smart phones and other devices was affecting his family life. 贬补尘濒别迟鈥檚 BlackBerry, his first book, is an extended meditation on what 鈥渄igital maximalism鈥� is doing to us, and what we can do to regain control.
Powers is no Luddite. He is as attached to his cellphone and as dependent on wireless Internet as the rest of us. 鈥湵岵钩颈舯鸪兮�檚 BlackBerry鈥� differs from recent books like Nicholas Carr鈥檚 鈥淭he Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains鈥� by attempting to provide practical solutions to the conundrum of our conflicting impulses: our desire for maximum connectivity versus our need for time and space apart. Powers mounts a passionate but reasoned argument for 鈥渁 happy balance.鈥�
First, however, he highlights the all-too-familiar pitfalls of the 鈥淭oo-Much-Information Age.鈥� He goes all the way back to Plato and Seneca to make his case that 鈥渨henever new ways of connecting have emerged, they鈥檝e always presented the kinds of challenges we face today 鈥� busyness, information overload, that sense of life being out of control.鈥� With the Internet, we鈥檙e still in the adjustment period.
Like Alain de Botton, Powers is a lively, personable writer who seeks applicable lessons from great thinkers of the past. He calls his gurus the 鈥淪even Philosophers of Screens鈥�: in addition to Plato and Seneca, they include Gutenberg, Shakespeare, Ben Franklin, Thoreau, and Marshall McLuhan. All of them, he claims, share our experience with the tug of war between crowd and self, outward and inward, medium and message.
In Plato鈥檚 鈥淧haedrus,鈥� a dialogue that takes place during a walk outside Athens, Powers finds an argument for the restorative powers of distance and conversation at a time when written language was threatening what had been an oral society. From Seneca, he gleans practical techniques grounded in Stoicism for tuning out chaos through the art of concentration and deep, narrowly focused thought.
Thoreau is a more obvious source of inspiration. When he retreated from Concord to Walden in 1845, two new inventions, the railroad and the telegraph, were transforming the world. Powers admires Thoreau鈥檚 willingness to escape, simplify, and disconnect in order to reestablish the paradigm of home as sanctuary.
In the title essay, Powers compares his own retro attachment to Moleskine notebooks to an erasable 鈥渢able鈥� referred to in 鈥淗amlet.鈥� The unhappy prince wipes away 鈥渁ll trivial fond records,鈥� replacing them with a note about what his father鈥檚 ghost has told him about Claudius鈥檚 treachery. Thus 贬补尘濒别迟鈥檚 tabletlike device helps him focus 鈥淸i]n this distracted globe鈥� on what鈥檚 most important: avenging his father. It鈥檚 an unorthodox, literal reading of a metaphor for how an obsession supersedes all prior concerns, but Powers milks this passage for the idea that old tools can help fight overload and 鈥渘ew technologies don鈥檛 always vanquish or supersede old ones.鈥�
Powers鈥檚 personal solution to digital distraction is a 鈥渄isconnectopia鈥� or Internet Sabbath that involves turning off the family modem on weekends. This will no doubt strike some as obvious, others as unnecessarily draconian or untenably inconvenient. In a recent New York Times op-ed article, Harvard psychology professor Steven Pinker offers other common-sense strategies: 鈥淵es, the constant arrival of information packets can be distracting or addictive.... The solution is not to bemoan technology but to develop strategies of self-control, as we do with every other temptation in life. Turn off e-mail or Twitter when you work, put away your BlackBerry at dinner time....鈥�
Despite Powers鈥檚 lucid, engaging prose and thoughtful take on the joys of disconnectivity, 鈥湵岵钩颈舯鸪兮�檚 BlackBerry鈥� is bogged down by as many repetitions as a Google search. Could Powers have pared down his book to a long essay? You bet. Is it symptomatic of the disorder he鈥檚 describing 鈥� impatience born of years of Internet browsing 鈥� that I wish he had?I don鈥檛 think so. In this era of information overload, it鈥檚 important to go deep, but also to keep it crisp.
Heller McAlpin, a freelance critic in New York, is a frequent Monitor contributor.
