digitally numb

Rediscovering the grid (while trying to escape it)

I spent the last 10 days looking for adventure in an exotic land. This was no resort vacation and daily comforts that I tend to take for granted were few and far between. The places I visited had unusual food, bad plumbing, limited electricity and ancient customs that hold true till today. It was exciting, disorienting, and strangely liberating at the same time.

Getting away from it all not only helped me get a renewed perspective on the over-connectedness and tedium of modern life, but also how modem media and communications technologies were transforming lives in remote corners of the world. It helped me develop a renewed appreciation of the promise that new technology offers. It also made me realize that the technophiles folly lies in not being satisfied by how we can be enriched by technology and instead letting ourselves get consumed by it.

My attempts to disconnect from modern life and modern technology were fairly successful, but as I traveled deeper through valleys and mountains, sand dunes and ancient castles, I realized how modern technology was ironically playing a key role in this whole journey. I wouldn’t have found my adventure tour operator if it wasn’t for the Internet and most of the coordination that was making my challenging trip possible was being done over cell phones.

While hiking through a dusty valley in the scorching heat, we ran into a tribal boy on a donkey. He offered to make us tea and we obviously welcomed the break. As we watched him pick sage and blend it into a fragrant brew, he explained how he lived in a tent in the valley with no electricity or modern comforts…then his cell phone rang. My fellow hikers and I raised our eyebrows and chuckled; as the tribal boy went on to explain (and our guide translated) how his cell phone played a crucial role in his life. It allowed him to stay connected to his tribesmen across the valley (and I suspect, also find out if there were any weary hikers heading in his direction). The next day, I spent hours riding a camel through the desert. In the middle of the journey, my tour guide started quizzing me about the merits of the iPhone vs the Blackberry. He explained how cell phones had changed the tour business in his country, from tour operators to the camel handlers, who were now able to take last minute bookings and be available to do business any time the need arose. During a lunch break in the middle of the desert, I showed him my iPhone and described various features that he had only heard of but never actually seen. I watched as he excitingly played around with it and discussed how great it would be to not only make phone calls, but also access email while he was on the road.

On the last day of my trip, we trekked across sandy mountains and didn’t see another human for miles. My guide suffered an unfortunate tumble on the steep rocks. His cell phone slipped out of his hand and shattered on the jagged sandstone. Luckily, he escaped with only minor bruises. I watched him stare dejectedly at his broken phone and asked him how he would make it through the day without it (since so much of his business depended on it). He laughed and replied “I’m still here and unhurt — and so are you. The phone was just a phone. Maybe that was the mountains way of reminding me what really matters”.

I smiled, thanked the mountain and held on tight to my iPhone.

Transcending the digital vortex: why slowing down is important in a high-speed age

“We shape our tools, and thereafter our tools shape us”. Wise words from the book Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man by Marshall McLuhan (published in 1964). According to McLuhan, all technologies or mediums are extensions of our capabilities and our senses and are means of enhancing human functions. For example, language is an extension of thought and memory, writing is an extension of speech, a knife may be an extension of the hand and a car may be the extension of our feet. Extensions add efficiency to our lives and according to a recent survey, may also be a confidence booster. However, extensions come with drawbacks and what McLuhan also pointed out was that every new extension via technology also has the effect of amputating or modifying some other extension. We see very clear examples of this today – laptops and smart phones are an extension of our voices, thoughts and memories, but it amputates face-to-face conversations (and some would say our offline social skills in general).

According to McLuhan, the mediums of communication are much more significant than the actual content of the media. We tend to get swept up by the effects of new mediums that change us in ways that we can rarely foresee. McLuhan drew inspiration from Edgar Allan Poe’s short story “Descent into the Maelstrom”, in which a fisherman recounts how he survived an enormous whirlpool caused by a hurricane at sea. Much like the fisherman in Poe’s story, McLuhan found that we can escape the turmoil of the technology whirlpool by observing and unraveling the clear patterns caused by new media extensions.

We are now surrounded by what McLuhan would call the final phase of the extensions of man — where digital technology and high-speed connectivity is simulating and replacing our entire consciousness in various ways. We know we are over-connected and distracted, but what do we do about it? How do we escape the vortex of information overload in the digital age? There are different ways to tackle this issue and all are equally important. It starts with the technology itself and the importance of designing technology that reflects and supports human values. But, most of us can’t control that. What we can control is how we use these technologies and how we choose to consume media.

A new movement may be gaining momentum – The Slow Media Movement. I first heard about it a few months ago when American Public Media did a story on it. Basically, it stems from the overall Slow Movement, which encourages us to slow down the overall pace of life. For example, the Slow Food Movement focuses on cooking food with detail and attention, using traditional recipes and local produce. Slow Food has emerged into a global movement, with thousands of members around numerous countries. The Slow Media Movement borrows from the core idea of slowing down and applies it to the world of digital media. As Jennifer Rauch puts it, “it is a movement that encourages people to re-value offline media and get disconnected more” or as the Slow Media Movement’s Facebook page describes it, “It (Slow Media) simply means that sometimes media is best enjoyed without dividing your attention between it and other activities”. If you’re interested in learning more, I encourage you to read the Slow Media Manifesto (English Translation) that was recently published.

The way I look at it, the Slow Media Movement is just a simple reminder for the digital age – a reminder to find a middle way. Hopefully it can help us realize that being connected or informed using modern technology has its place, but its not a substitute for listening and having meaningful interactions with and in the presence of other humans. It’s about being conscious of our media diet and its individual benefits when weighed against what meaningful extensions it amputates from our lives.

We thirst for information and connectivity and the rules of Digital Etiquette may be changing according to some, but it should not come at the cost of the things that add the most value to our lives. Start with a small step – the next time you’re in the company of others, try giving your precious iPhone (and the email, social networking, text messaging and other digital distractions that come with it) a break. Who knows, you may momentarily transcend the digital vortex and discover the joy of a REAL connection.

For more information on slowing down in general, I highly recommend The GOOD (and ReadyMade) Guide to Slowing Down & the Carl Honore’s book, In Praise of Slowness: How A Worldwide Movement Is Challenging the Cult of Speed.