Hamlet's BlackBerry (21 page)

In his efforts to encourage this, he hit on some important truths about life in an electronic society. Sometimes it really does feel as though your brain is extended so far into the outward world, it's left your body. When this happens, it's very difficult to go back inward and be alone with your thoughts. That's what depth comes down to, really, taking all the stuff your mind has gathered in its travels back inside, to sort through it and see what it all means. To make it your own. The only way to cultivate a happy inner life is to spend time there, and that's impossible when you're constantly attending to the latest distraction. Attention deficit issues, Internet addiction, and other tech-related maladies are all about being stuck in outward gear.

McLuhan's prescription? He insisted he wasn't advocating any particular approach and didn't provide specific instructions about how to apply his work. His ideas are best if used selectively; his most valuable insight is that even though technology is impinging more than ever on our minds, they're still
our
minds. You can allow yourself to be led around by technology, or you can take control of your consciousness and thereby your life. He had a way with metaphors, and he had one for each of these options.

He used the Greek myth of Narcissus to explain why people become entranced by tech gadgets. Narcissus is the youth who sees his own reflection in the water and mistakes it for somebody else. “Now the point of this myth,” McLuhan wrote, “is the fact that men at once become fascinated by any extension of themselves in any material other than themselves.” Similarly, he said, we're fascinated by new technologies because they project us beyond ourselves. But just like Narcissus, we
don't recognize that that's what the gadget is doing, projecting
us
, by extending our bodies into the world. The confusion induces a kind of trance. We can't take our eyes off it, but we don't understand why.

His nickname for the Narcissus type applies to anyone who has ever been mysteriously spellbound by a screen (i.e., just about everyone): the Gadget Lover. But some people have it really bad. The cure, McLuhan said, “is simply in knowing that the spell can occur immediately upon contact, as in the first bars of a melody.” Feeling the need yet again to stare longingly into the screen? Think of Narcissus and resist.

The second metaphor is about the active, take-charge approach he favored. Being hooked up to the crowd all the time—our central nervous systems “interlinked,” as my friend put it—doesn't mean we have to surrender our fate to it. To make this point, McLuhan used an Edgar Allan Poe story called “A Descent into the Maelstrom,” about a fisherman whose boat is sucked into an enormous whirlpool. Down he spins into the roaring vortex, certain he's going to die. Then something strange happens. In his delirium, he relaxes and, to amuse himself, makes a game out of studying how the whirlpool works.

Other boats have been drawn in and demolished, and he notices that the pieces of flotsam flying past behave in different ways depending on their shapes. While most hurtle rapidly downward, cylindrical objects such as barrels aren't swallowed up as easily. Those linger up near the top of the vortex, closer to the surface. Based on this observation, he decides to lash himself to his own water cask and leap overboard. It works. The boat continues whirling down to its doom, but the clever fisherman doesn't. “The cask to which I was attached sank very little farther,” he says. Eventually the whirlpool stops whirling and he winds up back on the surface. “The sky was clear, the
winds had gone down, and the full moon was setting radiantly in the west.” He's saved himself.

To McLuhan, the whirlpool stood for life in an electronic world. Here we are, surrounded by a ferocious, disorienting barrage of information and stimuli, seemingly spinning out of control. “How are we to get out of the maelstrom created by our own ingenuity?” he asked. His answer was to do what the fisherman did. Instead of panicking, take a deep breath and be resourceful. Study the flotsam of the moment, and grab onto something solid.

Poe's story was a favorite of McLuhan because, like his philosophy, it came down to the individual. Human ingenuity may have created our whirlpool, but it can also save us, one person at a time. We shouldn't be paralyzed by the new environment in which we find ourselves, but engaged and creative. “People are cowed by technology,” Kevin McMahon, the director of a documentary film about the philosopher called
McLuhan's Wake
, once observed. “The optimistic side of McLuhan's message is: You've built these things, and you can control them if you understand how they affect you. To me, his message is still really important.”

The logical question, then, is: what's
our
water cask? Like the fisherman, everyone has to work that out for himself. We're all different, and there's no one-size-fits-all way to balance the outward life and the inward one. That has always been true. What matters most is engagement, being conscious that you're shaping your own experience every moment. If you spend most of your time pressing keys and managing electronic traffic, that's what your life will be about. Maybe that makes you happy. If not, you have other options.

One helpful McLuhan technique, a refined version of his cure for the Narcissus trance, is to bear in mind that different devices affect us in
different ways
. To illustrate how this
works, he used temperature as metaphor, distinguishing between “hot” and “cool” technologies. A hot technology is intense, overwhelming us with information and stimuli. A cool one is less intense, inviting the user to participate more in the experience, fill in the blanks. “The hot form excludes, and the cool one includes,” he wrote.

He defined radio as a hot medium, because it intensely floods one sense with information, leaving little for the listener to fill in. But he said that television is cool, because it seeks more viewer involvement. These definitions are flexible and can change over time, since new technologies alter how older ones affect us. Today, though digital screens are highly participatory, they're also overwhelming and, arguably, hot. And radio now seems relatively cool.

The point is that by bearing in mind that gadgets have different effects, you can regulate the climate in your mind. It's another way of thinking about the continuum of connectedness that we're always moving along. If six straight hours of screen time has your mind overheated, what will cool it down? Staring at your handheld the entire subway ride home might not do it. Maybe it's better to just sit quietly and enjoy the ride. Sometimes the coolest device of all is no device. Rather than allowing external forces to define how we feel inside, each of us can be our own thermostat.

As instructive as McLuhan's ideas remain, even more remarkable in retrospect is how eager the world was to hear them. Half a century ago, there was enough interest in the human dilemmas posed by technology to turn an obscure literature professor into an international celebrity. And by raising consciousness about these questions, McLuhan further broadened that interest. For a time, there was a booming market in self-help for the technologically confused, including Alvin Toffler's
Future Shock
, with the new term “information
overload.” Robert Pirsig's bestseller,
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
, offered a new way of thinking about the relationship between human beings and technology, drawing on both Eastern and Western philosophy

Today there's plenty of chatter about the burden of screens, but not the same kind of critical, constructive engagement. Narcissus? Hot and cool media? Does anyone entertain thoughts remotely like this as they scroll through the inbox, vaguely wondering why their mind feels tapped out? We shrug and accept this as our fate. Instead of celebrity philosophers we have celebrity chefs, dozens of them. But they never talk about how delicious
life itself
could be if we followed a different recipe. That's what McLuhan was all about, really, recognizing that the kitchen of the mind is stocked with all the best ingredients. Each of us could be in there every day, cooking up a masterpiece. Why aren't we?

Ideas in Practice

Practical Philosophies for Every Day

T
hus far into this new era, we've followed a clear-cut approach: we've set out to be as connected as possible, all the time. For most of us, this was not a conscious decision. We did it without really thinking about it, not realizing there was any choice in the matter.

We did have a choice and still do. And because how we live with these devices is a choice, this conundrum is really a philosophical one. It's a matter of the ideas and principles that guide us. If we continue on the current path, over time the costs of this life will erase all the benefits. The answer, therefore, is to adopt a new set of ideas and use them to live in a more thoughtful, intentional way.

There are clues all around us. Whenever I open a gap between myself and my screens, good things happen. I have time and space to think about my life in the digital realm and all the people and information I encounter there. I have a chance to take the outward experiences of the screen back inward. This happened in a small but memorable way the day I called my mother en route to the airport. It was just a routine call, until I put the phone down. Only then did the experience take on unexpected richness and significance.

Such gaps also allow our awareness to return to the physical world. I'm not just a brain, a pair of eyes, and typing fingers. I'm a person with a living body that moves through space and time. In letting screens run my life, I discount the rest of my existence, effectively renouncing my own wholeness. I live a lesser life and give less back to the world. This problem is not just individual and private; it's afflicting all our collective endeavors, in business, schools, and government and at every level of society. We're
living
less and
giving
less, and the world is the worse for it.

This is the moment, while the digital age is still young, to recoup these losses, to bring “all that is human around us,” in Google chairman Eric Schmidt's words, back into the equation.

With that aim, in Part II, I went back into the database of human experience in search of helpful ideas. As the seven philosophers showed, this conundrum is as old as civilization. As human connectedness advances, it always makes life busier, by creating new crowds. And life in the crowd inevitably gives rise to the questions we're asking right now: Why don't I have time to think? What's this lost, restless feeling I can't seem to shake? Where does the crowd end, and where do I begin? What are these tools doing to us, and can we fix it?

The philosophers offered all sort of answers, and a number of themes emerged. The most important was the need to strike a healthy balance between connected and disconnected, crowd and self, the outward life and the inward one.

One might argue that civilization always survives such transitions and moves on, so why worry? Of course we'll survive. The question is whether we'll do more than that. In all the earlier periods we've looked at, there were people who thrived and found happiness and people who didn't. The former found something approximating the happy equilibrium Socrates was seeking when he prayed that his outward and inward selves
might “be at one.” The latter became hostage to their outwardness and never shook “the restless energy of a hunted mind.”

Below is a review of the key points along with more concrete ideas about how they might be applied today. The examples are drawn primarily from my own life and experience, because that's what I know. These are suggestions, not prescriptions. Everyone's circumstances are unique, and there's no best approach to this challenge. The purpose of this exercise is to help you develop strategies of your own. Awareness is half the battle, and
any
effort, no matter how small, counts as progress.

1. Plato

Principle: Distance

In Plato's story, Socrates and his friend put the busyness of Athens behind them just by taking a walk. Physical distance is the oldest method of crowd control. In one obvious sense, today it's much harder to go outside the “walls” of the connected life. Truly disconnected places are increasingly rare. But in another way, it's easier. Take a walk without a digital gadget, and distance is yours. The moment you leave all screens behind, you're outside the walls.

Why isn't this a common practice already? Because taking a mobile along seems so harmless and, indeed, sensible. We have acquired a sense that it's dangerous to venture out without one, as though we could never fend for ourselves. It's
nice
to have your digital friend along with you, just in case.

In subtle but important ways, however, it changes the nature of the experience. Though a smart phone brings convenience and a sense of security, it takes away the possibility of true separateness. It's a psychic leash, and the mind can feel it tugging. That's the problem: we've gotten so used to the tug, it's hard to imagine life without it.

To create the modern equivalent of ancient distance and enjoy the benefits it brings, you have to put screens out of reach. Leave the phone in a drawer and walk out the door. Nothing bad is going to happen, and something good just might. Though your disconnected walk might not produce a Socrates-style rapture, it will yield a new sense of inner freedom. Strolling along a city street surrounded by people bent over screens, just knowing
you're
going “commando” puts a spring in your step.

The same underlying principle can be applied to other everyday experiences. Any quick journey out into the world, even the most mundane errand, can double as a miniescape, as long as you have no screen. At the other extreme, try the extended version: an out-of-town holiday. Put on your vacation auto-reply, leave all connective devices at home, and resolve not to check once, even if the opportunity presents itself. Pick a destination, grab a companion, and make a digital escape. If there's a screen at the inn, give it a wide berth.

A few winters ago,
Condé Nast Traveler
magazine sent three reporters to Moscow, one equipped with a BlackBerry, one with an iPhone, and one with just a hard-copy guidebook. They were given a series of tourist challenges to complete in the frigid metropolis, such as finding a great cheap restaurant and locating a pharmacy open at midnight. The low-tech contestant won. After the article ran, one reader wrote in: “I have traveled successfully around the world armed with nothing more than a dog-eared guidebook and a friendly smile…. As any seasoned traveler will tell you, the kindness of strangers can be relied upon anywhere. Just don't be too absorbed in your BlackBerry to notice.”

Meanwhile, distance in the old-fashioned sense hasn't completely lost its meaning. There
are
still places where it's hard or impossible to find a digital connection of any kind, including
remote parts of the continental United States. Take every opportunity to enjoy them, because they won't be around forever. In my family, when we're considering vacation possibilities and summer camps, we perk up when we hear there's no mobile phone or Internet service. Though it's increasingly common for airplane flights to have wireless Internet, not all do. If there's a fee for the service, save your money. You'll be getting a much more valuable amenity—distance from your own connectedness—for free.

2. Seneca

Principle: Inner Space

When physical distance either wasn't available or didn't do the trick, Seneca found inner distance. He did so by focusing on one idea or person and tuning out the rest of the world. Today minimizing the crowd is an even more essential skill, and there are more ways to practice it. The first and most obvious is to choose a friend or family member in your physical vicinity and just have a conversation. A focused, undistracted chat, without screens. It's so obvious, it seems absurd to recommend it. But are we
really
talking to each other anymore? If the person you've focused on has a screen, gently ask him or her to put it aside. What you'll be saying, in effect, is:
I want to be with just you
. It's a rarely heard sentiment these days, and it shouldn't be.

Though letter writing is a dying art, there are plenty of other activities that afford the easygoing absorption of the “flow” state. Especially helpful is anything that involves working with the hands, such as splitting wood, knitting, cooking, or tinkering with a car engine or a bicycle.

We can also minimize the crowd right on the screen, and though it won't bring the inner distance that happens offline, it can help. How many Web pages and other windows do you keep open on your screen at a time? Do you shop online while
instant messaging while composing e-mails while randomly checking out videos while playing a game on the side? Try the opposite approach: limit yourself to one screen activity at a time, and don't use the screen to wander away from a phone chat. The person on the other end is to you as Lucilius was to Seneca.

Another strategy for reducing time online is to start using
other people
as your search engines. Rather than constantly checking for news and updates, I let friends and family tell me what's happening. What are the headlines? Which movie star is in trouble? What's the latest outrage on the political front? It's more enjoyable listening to the latest developments through the interpretive lens of a person you know, and it saves a lot of trouble.

Somehow, we've gotten it into our heads that the best use of social-networking technologies is to acquire as many friends and contacts as possible, jamming everyone we know into the same virtual space. Thus, that barely remembered “pal” from elementary school who resurfaced a few weeks ago gets to mix and gossip with our current friends from the office—great.

Back when the Internet was a thrilling novelty, there was a natural tendency to make the most of it by constantly expanding your social connections. Now that much of the human race is online, it makes sense to move in the other direction. Whenever possible, narrow and refine the crowd. While I was writing this book and trying not to be needlessly distracted, I had just one active social network, dedicated solely to a small group of people (less than two dozen) whom I knew during one brief but important period of my life—
and no one else
. Of course, there are endless ways to form smaller groups within online networks, and you don't want to overdo it. Too many subgroups becomes as complex as too many individuals. But, if used intelligently, this tactic can reduce the digital horde
to more manageable slices. Rather than firing up my screen and being confronted by everyone I ever knew, when I went to my micro-network, a more intimate group was always waiting for me.
Ah, here's the old gang
. It was the screen equivalent of a neighborhood pub.

3. Gutenberg

Principle: Technologies of Inwardness

Gutenberg made one of the great tools of inwardness, books, available to more people. Could today's technological innovators pull off an equivalent trick with the devices of this moment? The need for inwardness is as great, if not greater. Yet now all the momentum in technology is in the opposite direction, toward
more
intense connectedness, increasing our exposure to the crowd. “All your applications. All at once” said the ad for one handheld, as if “all at once” were helpful to the mind.

The e-book experience is moving in the same direction. Though often touted as a giant step forward, some e-readers are designed to make the experience of reading more outward. Effectively minicomputers with built-in e-mail and Web browsers, they make it much harder to go inward as a reader. Do we really want to make our books as busy as the rest of our lives?

The Gutenberg principle could be applied to many other digital devices, including the notebook computer. If I want to shut out distractions and really get some work done on my notebook, I turn off the wireless, transforming the computer into a disconnected tool. Unfortunately, on my notebook this is a somewhat cumbersome process involving multiple keys. Digital technologies should acknowledge in their design that it's sometimes good to be disconnected. A small but helpful fix would be to provide a prominent Disconnect button that
would allow the user to go back and forth easily between the two zones, connected and not. Today, as in the fifteenth century, everyone needs time away from the crowd. Technology should serve that need.

4. Shakespeare

Principle: Old Tools Ease Overload

In the early print era, handwriting didn't go out of style, it came on strong. As Hamlet's “handheld” shows, old tools can be an effective way to bring the information overload of new ones under control. Today older technologies continue to ground the busy mind.

Paper is the best example. Since the middle of the twentieth century, futurists have been predicting the imminent demise of paper. It hasn't happened, because paper is still a useful tool. It's arguably becoming
more
useful, since it offers exactly what we need and crave, a little disconnectedness. Read a paper book. Keep a journal or just jot notes in a simple notebook, as I do in my Moleskine. Subscribe to a new magazine. In a multitasking world where pure focus is harder and harder to come by, paper's seclusion from the Web is an emerging strength. There's nothing like holding a sheaf of beautifully designed pages in your hands. The whole world slows down, and your mind with it.

Don't assume that the newest tools are the best choice for a given task. One year at Eastertime, our son decided to make a drawing for the family gathering at my mother's house. Since he wanted to print a copy for everyone, he headed straight for his iMac and a drawing program called Kid Pix. Wait a second, we said. If he did it at the kitchen table by hand with colored markers, he'd have a lot more artistic freedom. Then he could copy it on his color printer. (He'd also be away from Internet temptations, but we didn't mention that.) He thought about it
for a moment and agreed that markers are more fun and expressive. It came out beautifully, and he proclaimed, “Kid Pix isn't very good, anyway.”