Our culture of distraction

I remember the good old days, when I received a dozen or so emails every day at the office, thereby obviating the need to send and receive paper letters on those matters. Then something unproductive happened. As I started getting more and more emails, I found that they were becoming more fragmented, like stretched-out conversations, and more lost in a sea of emails that tried to sell me something or tried to make sure that I was constantly updated as to nothing very important. Keeping up with email, then, has become both an incredible tool and a huge time drain. I think of that every day as I read and create 100 emails, many of which require detailed responses. Email, which was once a way to avoid sending and receiving paper letters, is now taking up several hours of every day. Why don't I turn it off and get a lot more done? Because, every day, I end up decided that I don't want to throw out the baby with the bath-water. I love-hate the way email barely often enough distracts my attention to something that barely often enough requires my attention. Sam Anderson explores our new attention-divided culture in a New York Magazine article titled, "In Defense of Distraction":

This is troubling news, obviously, for a culture of BlackBerrys and news crawls and Firefox tabs—tools that, critics argue, force us all into a kind of elective ADHD. The tech theorist Linda Stone famously coined the phrase “continuous partial attention” to describe our newly frazzled state of mind. American office workers don’t stick with any single task for more than a few minutes at a time; if left uninterrupted, they will most likely interrupt themselves. Since every interruption costs around 25 minutes of productivity, we spend nearly a third of our day recovering from them. We keep an average of eight windows open on our computer screens at one time and skip between them every twenty seconds.

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Culture and Copyright in the 21st Century

On 24 March, 2009 Lawrence Lessig delivered the keynote speech, Getting the Network the World Needs, at the OFC Conference in San Diego, CA. This is a revision of a REMIX talk, distinguishing between parts of the 20th Century that were Read-Only and parts that were Read-Write. His brilliantly delivered thesis discusses how culture prior to the 20th century was essentially read-write, everyone consumed and created the culture interactively. During the 20th century centralization and control of media and distribution transformed our culture to a read only - where creation was almost exclusively the province of professionals and professional distribution channels (tv, movies, music). He then suggests that the 21st century brings the promise and the demand for building a read-write culture once more, and for moving far beyond the mash-up of the past decade. He also discusses the necessary legal and infrastructural changes needed to accommodate this changed reality. Warner Music has tried to serve a DCMA takedown, based on his inclusion of some music and media clips - despite the obvious and clear "fair use".

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Computer souls

[A kitchen table conversation between a parent and a child]

Daddy, if my computer burned up in a fire, would it still compute? No, Mary. Programs don't simply run by themselves. They depend upon extremely complicated hardware and software. If your computer burns up in a fire, there would be no hardware and no software with which to run your favorite programs. But I've used my computer for a long time. I've grown emotionally attached to it. It makes me sad that it won't actually compute if it were to be destroyed. Doesn't my computer have a soul that continues running my programs somewhere else after my computer burns up on Earth? I'm sorry, Mary. There is no computer heaven and there is no computer soul. There is no evidence of either of these. But we can't prove that it won't keep computing after it burns up in a fire, right? No. Sorry, Mary. Without hardware and software, no computing will happen. The ashes of your burned up computer would lack any systematic structure. They certainly lack the complex organization required to run programs. It is impossible for any computation to occur without the hardware and the software intact. Your claim that a computer would keep computing even though it is completely destroyed is an extraordinary claim that would require extraordinary proof. We have no such proof whatever. But Lisa Jenkins says that burned up computers do keep computing. She says that you only need to have faith and that no one can disprove that burned up computers live on in a parallel world. She says destroyed computers keep working, but not in a physical way. She goes to a special building on Sunday where thousands of people all believe that computers keep computing even after they are completely destroyed. No, Mary. The same thing happens to computers as happens to your own body. As you know, when your body dies, your entire body rots, including your brain. As you know, when your brain is rotted, you don't have any more thoughts because there is no intact functional neural structure anymore, and therefore no basis for any continuing thoughts. Oh, daddy! It's not the same! Yes, I know that when my body dies, it will be impossible for me to think anymore. My computer is different, though. I just can't believe that my amazing computer would stop computing just because it gets completely destroyed! Don't try to compare my beautiful computer to a human brain! It's not a matter of what you want to believe, my child. It's a matter of what actually happens in the real world. You can continue using your computer for now and loving the way it works, but it would be unhealthy to believe that it would keep computing even if it was destroyed. As a parent, it's my job to level with you regarding difficult topics like this. I'm so sorry.

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I don’t understand high volume text messaging

I know this is a dramatic example from Yahoo News. I'm not trying to paint with a brush that's too wide:

Their thumbs sure must be sore. Two central Pennsylvania friends spent most of March in a text-messaging record attempt, exchanging a thumbs-flying total of 217,000. For one of the two, that meant an inches-thick itemized bill for $26,000.

I understand email. I understand a text message here and there. I don't understand the allure of volume texting personal updates to friends (any more than a dozen per day). And, yes, I don't understand the allure of Twitter (and see here). Not everyone is like these record-setters, but our society is now filled with people who are truly obsessed with communicating in micro-messages. Many parents are concerned that their children aren't developing traditional conversational skills. It really seems like quantity over quality. Or is it insecurity: the need to be reassured that someone exists on the other end and cares enough about your almost-mindless phrase that they reciprocate with their own almost-mindless phrase? If you care about someone, why not join them for a face-to-face conversation, or call them on a phone and have a real conversation, or video-Skype them (a truly remarkable and free service which I recently discovered)? Are people becoming afraid that they won't be able to string more than a few sentences together? That they won't be able to conversationally perform under the pressure of the moment? Why the rampant preference for conversationus interruptus? In my experience, most of the important things in life cannot be said in a short burst of words, and quantity cannot make up for quality. But maybe I'm just old fashioned.

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Creation on FaceBook

I recently volunteered to serve the data mining company, FaceBook. That is, I have joined this social networking site, fed them my stats, and regularly post information that FaceBook incorporates into its marketing database. Anything you write or post, they claim as their personal property so they can resell it.And there is the reputed link between FaceBook and the CIA. But I figure that since the FBI launched Carnivore in the 1990's, we're all scrod, anyway. But the real point of this post is to show you this funny version of Biblical Creation, as it might have manifested in FaceBook. They even have Sarah Palin, you betcha! And it isn't actually on FaceBook. No worries. Excerpt:

  • God: Don't worry, Cobra, you get to stay here. Just hang out in the garden.
  • Cobra: Ok. You mean on the beer trees?
  • God: Er, sorry, for budgetary reasons, we had to replace the beer trees with apple trees. But it's ok, apples are good for you. Just go play on those, ok?

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