Transport

The question of being

‘This question of ‘being’ is not a complex, ontological question, ‘the meaning of my life’, the Cartesian type stuff- it’s not all about me, Emmanuel Levinas believes that the whole question of ‘being’ is instantly informed, it only becomes a question, when faced with face of the ‘other’. ’Being’ is then not an existentialist question, but an ethical, a moral question. We as humanitarians, I think that’s where we start, what we believe: that when we face the face of the other, this other, who is like us, it brings about what some would call this imperitive, to recognise the preciousness.’

- Dr Hugo Slim,  ‘Being Humanitarian: Personal Morality and Political Project in Today’s Wars’ lecture, Oxford Ethics, Law and Armed Conflict (iTunes U)

Connection vs Connectivity

Notes from a talk by William Powers, author of ‘Hamlet’s Blackberry: a practical guide for building a good life in the digital age’.

‘Even as digital technology added connectedness and opportunity, something else was being taken away. At home, the more connected we were, the less we were spending time together. At work, as I got more connected, I was slicing my attention span thinner and thinner. I was overwhelmed by this realisation when, brushing my teeth one night, I found I felt the need to do something else, wandered in and began to organise my sock drawer, and doing this with one hand and brushing my teeth with another, started thinking about a third thing to do.

‘I always thought I’d write a book, but wasn’t sure on what. People told me you’ll write a book when you realise there’s a book you’d like to read and it isn’t available yet. I wrote this book after being given an opportunity to spend a semester at Harvard, and this topic was still on my mind- I wrote an essay essentially challenging the concept that as new technologies were developed, older technologies became obsolete, in truth the opposite is true: older technologies are re-purposed.

‘There is something I call the ‘conundrum of connectiveness’, the technology offering constant connectivity is new, we haven’t figured out how best to use it yet- I’m saying don’t throw the technology away but use it in a way that actually delivers what it promises- does bring about more fulfillment, and better connection.

‘Hamlet’s Blackberry looks at some of the information revolutions through history and how people dealt with them. I talk about the 7 philosophers of screens- even though some of them didn’t know screens would exist, i.e  Plato, living through the birth of writing and the alphabet was told by Socrates, ‘stay away from this writing thing- it’ll destroy your mind. Once something is written, it is dead, whereas conversation grows and develops’;  Senaca, Roman statesman 4BC-65AD who wrote about the ‘restless energy of the haunted mind’. I find great solace in knowing great people have wrestled with the problem of technology before, and we’ve come out better on the other side. Henry David Thoreau, an American living in the age of the telegraph and the railway, wrote about people’s addiction to the post office, of how people would visit the post office multiple times a day, and people meeting in the post office would not have meaningful conversation, it would be reduced to quick gossip as people rushed away to read their mail.

‘We are wired to connect, its a good thing- its how we have relationships and build communities, but because we are hardwired to connect, we can easily fall into the trap of overconnecting.

‘We need to make time among all the other connections to hear ourselves.

‘Tools of efficiency can become tools of inefficiency- studies in the US discussing the loss of $10M a year due to distracted employees.

‘At home one of the strategies to overcome this was the ‘internet sabbath’, disconnecting the modem on a Friday night and not turning it back on until Monday. At first it was hard, felt like an existential crisis, wondering around wondering who I was. It got better, and easier, acheiving what we wanted it to by spending time with each other at home, and after a while my wife and I realised we were better digital people because we had some time away, our minds had been refreshed.’

Responding to questions:

Q: How can we make this change, encourage others to?

‘I speak a lot at schools and businesses, I spoke at Google and Facebook on the same day and I realised that purveyors of these news technologies naturally are more aware of the challenges they are creating. Intel, creators of the chips that power these technologies, has been performing studies for years with staff. They once tried a ‘no email Friday’ which didn’t go down so well. Another was called ‘Quiet time’, which was more successful. More positive, own-able. Benjamin Franklin is someone else I speak about in my book, he was a very social person in his time, very connected, and realised the key was to have a ritual. A ritual that takes something away, like a diet, does not work so well. A ritual that gives something back, like more time to think rather than no email, works better.’

Q: What would your great grand children think of this book?

‘Hopefully they’ll look back on this and wonder that people needed to write about this at all- that we saw this time as a challenge. This is a book for now, about right now. And hopefully I’ll have written something else which is more enduring. I’ll borrow a quote, ‘This time, like all time, is a good time, if we but know what to do with it’.

Taken from written notes, essence unchanged, some words added to aid sentence structure.