Hamlet's BlackBerry (8 page)

It's possible that our brains will eventually adapt to a digital world and learn to better manage all these pulls on our attention. The organ's plasticity, or ability to change by rewiring itself, is well known. However, neuroplasticity is not the panacea it is sometimes made out to be. There are fundamental limits on our attentional capacity, based on the amount of brain space we have for what's called working memory. For that to grow would require a
structural
change far more significant than the rewiring of neural pathways. So, despite the
touted benefits of the various “brain training” gadgets now being marketed as solutions to attention problems, it isn't that easy.

Besides, it's not ultimately the brain that's overloaded; it's the thoughts and emotions that somehow arise within the gray matter—consciousness, the mind.

Brain and mind are intricately related, but in ways we've barely begun to understand. “We are still clueless about how the brain represents the content of our thoughts and feelings,” writes psychologist Steven Pinker. It's the mind that defines our lives, and we know quite a bit about how the mind works. Antonio Damasio, the pioneering neuroscientist who coined the phrase “movie-in-the-brain” to describe human consciousness, has observed that there is currently a “large disparity” between our knowledge of how the brain works, which is incomplete, and “the good understanding of mind we have achieved through centuries of introspection and the efforts of cognitive science.”

It's not just the hardware that matters but the software, the ideas. People change their behavior when they embrace a new way of thinking about it. Whether it's acquired from reading, therapy, a twelve-step program, or some other source, the philosophical approach isn't merely a control mechanism, a way of tamping down persistent urges. At its best, it's a profoundly creative force, a way of rethinking and reshaping some important aspect of life that's giving us trouble.

What's giving us trouble right now is our screens. We've been saying we need to change our habits, but, as our behavior makes clear,
we don't really mean it
. If we meant it, we'd be living differently. To mean it, you have to believe it, and to believe it, you need a set of convincing ideas. Those ideas might not alter the physical structure of our brains, but that's not necessary. As long as they change our minds, that will be enough,
because our behavior will naturally follow. People aren't going to change deeply ingrained habits just because company policy says it's bad for the bottom line or because a software program has decided to block the inbox. But if there's something valuable to be gained, more valuable than what's gained by staying glued to the screen, they just might. If the many failed solutions to the problem of overload were grounded in compelling principles and goals, some of them could actually work.

The twentieth-century thinker Michel Foucault had a nice phrase for philosophical tools that help us improve and transform our lives: technologies of the self. That's what we need now, a new technology of the self for a digital world.

Here's a place to begin:

These words didn't come from a Luddite malcontent trying to hold back progress. The speaker was Eric Schmidt, the chairman and CEO of Google, in a commencement address delivered at the University of Pennsylvania in the spring of 2009. In these hyperconnected times, it would have been an arresting statement no matter who had made it. But coming from the head of the organization that has, more than any other, defined the new connectedness, it was a stunner. Google isn't just a search engine, it's a vast media and advertising company whose profits are tied directly to the screen habits of people around the world. In urging the young graduates in his audience, and by extension everyone else, to turn off their computers, Schmidt was promoting behavior that would be demonstrably bad for his own bottom line.

A cynic would say he was just playing the lofty orator, knowing full well that our digital fixation runs so deep, his idealistic counsel would have no real effect. That, like other tech figures who have ostensibly backed the fight against overload, he was just talking the talk. But why bother to say it at all—he could have spoken about any topic—and why so directly and earnestly? “Turn off your computer” and “discover all that is human around us” are very different kinds of statements from “Let's develop industry solutions to information overload.” You don't often hear language like this from someone in Schmidt's position. But the world being what it is, the quote made the media rounds for a day (Tech mogul says we should disconnect, ironic!) and poof, it was gone.

What's interesting about it isn't so much the specific advice Schmidt was imparting—“Just disconnect” is hardly an original thought—but the ideas underpinning it. He was suggesting that for all the good work our screens do for us, there are some experiences they can't deliver, and those happen to be the most important ones. He didn't use the word “depth,” but that's what he was saying is lost when we live on and through the screen. His simple exhortation to turn off the screen assumed that we each have the capacity to recognize this and the power to change how we live with these devices. And that it's up to us
as individuals
to use that power. At a time when the crowd is held up as the source of all authority and meaning—we Google ourselves to see if we matter—those are radical thoughts.

In practical terms, he was saying everyone needs to create a gap between themselves and the screen—the gap that opens up when you turn it off. When you do that, something miraculous happens. You regain the best part of yourself and the best part of life, the human part. Previous efforts to solve this conundrum, whether by diets or devices, have also been premised on
the need for a gap. But they were missing the inner incentive, the reason to believe that Schmidt pointed toward.

We all regularly have experiences that point in the same direction, though we generally don't see them that way. When my phone call with my mother ended, I opened up a gap that took me to the same place he was talking about. In my case, the digital experience itself was part of my journey back to “all that is human.” But it wouldn't have happened if I hadn't ended the screen interaction. Ideally, we'd be able to find a set of ideas that would help us do this on a regular basis, so we'd get healthy doses of both kinds of experience, and each dimension would enrich the other. If we traveled back and forth more often, the digital zone would inevitably become more human. And isn't that really the goal?

The kinds of ideas I'm talking about, new philosophical approaches to the screen, are available to us right now in a somewhat unlikely place: the past. The “centuries of introspection” that have produced so many insights into the human mind and how best to use it also have a great deal to teach about the mind's relationship with technology. Though it often seems as though we're living in a completely new age, unlike anything that came before, this technological transformation has many precedents. History is replete with moments when some astonishing new invention came along that suddenly made it easier for people to connect across space and time. And those earlier shifts were as exhilarating and confusing to those who lived through them as today's are to us.

New modes of connecting always create new ways for individuals to create and prosper, and for the collective advancement of humanity. At the same time, there's a sense of life, especially the inner life, being thrown out of balance. It happened in the sixteenth century, after the arrival of print technology, and again in the middle of the nineteenth century,
when the railroad and the telegraph appeared. There are many other examples. The mind has been on a long journey, and along the way there have always been a few individuals who have arrived at valuable insights about how best to manage that journey.

The seven philosophers you will meet in the next part of the book lived through eras that resembled our own in certain essential ways. Even though most of them died long before anything resembling modern screens existed, they all understood the essential human urge to connect and were unusually thoughtful about the “screen equivalents” of their respective epochs.

Their lives and circumstances vary widely. One spent much of his life as a struggling entrepreneur. Another was, for a time, one of the most powerful men on Earth. They expressed their ideas in varied ways. Two are routinely ranked among the greatest writers of all time, while another left behind no written record of his thoughts. What they share is a profound interest in the questions raised by human connectedness. What is connecting all about, anyway? What can these tools do for us? What are their strengths and weaknesses? How can we use them to build better, more satisfying lives?

The past is not the conventional place to look for guidance on the new connectedness. In this forward-drive world, history can feel like the computer you owned fifteen years ago, outdated and pointless. What can seven dead white guys possibly teach us about life in a rapidly changing global society? More than you might imagine. Technology and philosophy are both tools for living, and the best tools endure and remain useful over long periods of time. Though we barely realize it, every day we use connective tools that were invented thousands of years ago. Similarly, great ideas have no expiration date.

What's most striking about these figures is how modern they often seem. As users of the “screens” of their day, they felt a pull much like the one we feel. At the same time, they and their contemporaries yearned for all that we yearn for: time, space, tranquillity, and, above all, depth. It's as if they saw the future coming and, in a way, lived it. The world has changed hugely over the centuries, but the basic ingredients of human happiness haven't.

Teachings of the Seven Philosophers of Screens

Plato Discovers Distance

“It's more refreshing to walk along country roads than city streets.”

 

O
ne of Plato's greatest dialogues begins in Athens on a beautiful summer day. It's the late fifth century
B.C
., a period sometimes referred to as Greece's golden age because there were so many gifted artists, poets, playwrights, philosophers, and statesmen living and working there at the same time. One of the most famous of them, Plato's teacher Socrates, spots a young man he knows walking down the street and calls out to him.

“Phaedrus, my friend! Where have you been? And where are you going?”

This hearty greeting captures the essence of Socrates, a man who cherished his friends and was intensely curious about their lives. He was an avid connector in the face-to-face sense, a trait that comes out over and over in the philosophical conversations he had with fellow Athenians, which form the backbone of Plato's writings.

This dialogue, known simply as
Phaedrus
, explores human connectedness in a time of dramatic technological change. A revolutionary new form of communication, written language,
had arrived in Greece, which had long been an oral society. It was beginning to catch on, and thoughtful people were worried about its effect on various aspects of life, particularly the life of the mind. In other words, though this story takes place roughly 2,400 years ago, it's about an era somewhat analogous to our own. Writing on the cusp between two technological eras, Plato examined questions that are in the air once again today.

Phaedrus tells Socrates that he's just spent the entire morning with the well-known orator Lysias, listening to his latest speech. To the modern reader, this might seem a curious way for a young man to be spending his time, but in a society largely organized around the spoken word, it was perfectly natural. Just as social networks and viral video clips are all the rage today, in rhetoric-obsessed Greece there was nothing cooler than sitting at the feet of a brilliant speaker, soaking up every word.

The speech was about a topic that's always of urgent interest: sex. Specifically, it was about the question of whether it's better to sleep with someone who's in love with you or someone who isn't. Lysias argued for the latter position, pointing out that when you have sex out of pure lust there are far fewer emotional complications.

Phaedrus thought the speech ingenious, and he's been walking around turning it over in his mind, trying to commit it to memory. In pursuit of this goal, he's headed outside the city walls, following the advice of a prominent doctor named Acumenus that “it's more refreshing to walk along country roads than city streets.” He invites Socrates to join him and hear more about the speech, and the older man readily agrees. They set off, eventually leaving the footpath to walk barefoot through a stream. They follow it until they reach a beautiful spot beside the stream where they can sit under a plane tree and talk.

Socrates marvels at what a lovely, tranquil place it is, prompting Phaedrus to observe that the philosopher seems like a total stranger to these natural surroundings: “As far as I can tell, you never even set foot beyond the city walls.”

Socrates concedes that it's true. “Forgive me, my friend. I am devoted to learning; landscapes and trees have nothing to teach me—only people in the city can do that.” He's journeyed here, he says, strictly because Phaedrus enticed him with an invitation to do what he loves to do best back in Athens, talk over a philosophical question like the one addressed by the speech. With that, he lies down on the grass and asks Phaedrus to recite Lysias's arguments for no-strings-attached sex.

When was the last time you went off with a friend and truly left the rest of the world behind? Socrates and Phaedrus are enjoying a type of human connection—in person, dedicated, utterly private—that's quite rare today. Even when you're physically with another person, it's hard to give them your undivided attention for a sustained period, or to receive the same from them. If there's a digital device nearby, chances are that one or both of you will be distracted or interrupted.

What's interesting is that this secluded chat was a rare experience for Socrates. He admits he hates to leave the crowded city, where his work as a philosopher revolves around his conversations with students and other intellectuals, usually in larger groups. In fact, this is the only one of Plato's many dialogues in which Socrates leaves Athens for a private tête-à-tête.

The philosopher had a deep craving for the oral connectedness that was dominant in his time. You might say he was an ancient maximalist and Athens was the “screen” that enabled his habit. Now, like a modern road warrior with a mobile broadband device, he's ventured into the hinterland in the hope that he'll be able to find a good connection there, too. And he's waiting for Phaedrus to provide it, with a rendition of that
libidinous lecture. Though life in ancient Greece was obviously different in many ways from life in the twenty-first century, the basic human desire to connect was the same. Socrates was seeking what everyone with a digital screen is after: contact, friendship, stimulation, ideas, professional and personal growth.

This outward urge goes back much further than the fifth century
B.C
. Countless thousands of years ago, our prehistoric ancestors knew nothing about the world beyond their immediate surroundings and had no connective tools with which to transcend their isolation. In fact, there was a time in the very distant past when they couldn't even converse with their closest companions, because they didn't know how.

Somewhere along the way, nobody knows exactly when, an amazing thing happened—or rather, two amazing things. Prehistoric humans came up with two of the most powerful connective tools ever devised, as E. H. Gombrich recounts in his book
A Little History of the World
:

I came across this passage while reading the book to my son at bedtime one recent winter. Gombrich wrote the
Little History
for children, but I learned more from it than I have from most adult history books, because he treats technology
and other facets of the past as the human stories they really are, free of specialist jargon and needless complexity. He calls those prehistoric people “the greatest inventors of all time,” and he's right. They wanted and needed to reach out beyond themselves, and they found a couple of brilliant ways to do it: words and images.

History retraces this story over and over. People are constantly trying to close the distances between them by inventing new connective tools and working over time to improve them. Humans are the only animals that devise multiple uses for a single tool, and we're especially good at finding new applications for our connective tools. If the “technology” of conversation was originally created to serve the practical needs of people struggling to survive in a harsh environment, by the fifth century
B.C
. it had evolved into something richer and more interesting: a path to truth and enlightenment.

Socrates used conversation to practice philosophy as nobody had ever practiced it before. Whereas previous philosophers had set themselves up literally as wise men with special access to the truth, he made no such claim. He was “a totally new kind of Greek philosopher,” writes modern-day scholar John M. Cooper. “He denied that he had discovered some new wisdom, indeed that he possessed any wisdom at all.” Rather, he believed the way to attain wisdom was through searching discussions with others like the ones he presided over in Athens, using the question-and-answer technique known today as the Socratic method. For Socrates, oral communication was the key to a good life.

But there was a downside to the connectedness of oral society. Talking enabled the emergence of early civilizations like Greece and the cities that were their nerve centers, none of which would have been built if people couldn't communicate their thoughts. These ancient metropolises offered many
benefits to those who lived in them, including the intellectual stimulation that Socrates treasured. At the same time, they imposed new burdens. They were busy places, not anything near as busy as today's cities but, by the standards of their time, busy indeed. To live in Athens was to be surrounded day and night by a few hundred thousand other people, with all their attendant activity, noises, smells, and other claims on one's attention. It was a permanent crowd, and life in a crowd is an inherently demanding experience.

Plato makes it clear that life in Athens could be taxing to the mind when he quotes Phaedrus explaining why he's decided to take a stroll outside the city walls. Like the modern person who takes up yoga or meditation on a doctor's advice, he's following the physician Acumenus's prescription for clearing the head. He's getting a little exercise, and in a very particular way. In order to think deeply about the speech, he's putting some distance between himself and the crowd.

Distance.
The very thing human beings had been running away from since prehistoric times, the space separating the self from others. The point of oral communication and all the good things that flowed from it had been to shrink the distances between people. Now, in the place where this kind of connectedness had reached its highest and most intense expression, thoughtful people were realizing that, for personal well-being and happiness, it was necessary to restore some of that distance to everyday life.

This dialogue isn't about distance per se. But Plato was a careful, economical writer, and it's unlikely he would have made so much of the walk in the country unless he was trying to make a point. Phaedrus was a member of Socrates' intellectual circle and, like Plato, deeply interested in rhetoric and philosophy. Thus, when he was walking along in the city trying to memorize the speech, he wasn't just idly musing, he
was doing work that mattered to him. And to do it well, he realized he needed some space.

For a twenty-first-century equivalent, think of the cubicle dweller who's spent the entire morning immersed in the digital crowd, shuttling among e-mails, Web pages, text messages, and other electronic activity. She wants to step away and focus on just one thing, perhaps an important project requiring sustained thought and creativity. Though not an aspiring philosopher, this worker is in much the same position as Phaedrus. She's striving to absorb new information, to learn from and make sense of it. But with all that stuff knocking around inside her head, it's awfully hard. How to refresh the overloaded mind?

In Athens, Plato suggested, one answer was creating a physical distance; getting away from the crowd by spending a few hours outside the walls. Curiously, though, Socrates doesn't see the point. He was about sixty at this time, and years of experience had convinced him that conversation was the only reliable path to wisdom and happiness—and the more people who were available to converse with, the better. By this logic, a philosopher (a word that means “lover of wisdom”) should never want to put any distance between himself and the crowd. It's the same basic principle that drives digital life today: the more you connect to others through screens, the better off you are.

Who was right, one of the most celebrated thinkers of all time or a young man remembered chiefly as a bit player in that thinker's work? Do we need distance, or don't we? The answer emerges in the balance of the dialogue.

Back at the stream, Phaedrus launches into the speech with the help of a surprising tool. Earlier, just before they stepped into the stream, Socrates said he wouldn't be satisfied with a mere summary of Lysias's argument. He wanted to hear it
word for word as originally delivered. Phaedrus protested that he couldn't possibly do that since he didn't have it memorized. Socrates then observed that Phaedrus seemed to be hiding something under his cloak, and he strongly suspected it was a written copy of the speech. At which point Phaedrus sheepishly pulled out exactly that, a hard copy of the oral presentation.

Some translations call it a “book,” others a “scroll.” Whatever you call it (I'm going with scroll), the point is that, as he headed out for his meditative walk, the younger man had taken with him a tool employing the very latest communications technology, written language based on an alphabet. In fact, writing wasn't completely new. The Egyptians and other early civilizations had pre-alphabetic writing systems. And the Greek alphabet had been around for several hundred years by that time, but it had been very slow to catch on. It was only in the lifetimes of Socrates and Plato that it really took hold. In contemporary terms, Phaedrus's scroll was roughly what a cell phone was around the year 1985, a technology still in the early stages of adoption and not yet fully understood.

The reason he had brought the scroll along is obvious: it was useful. It would allow him to continue thinking about Lysias's speech and work on memorizing it even as he wandered into the country. With the hard copy in hand, he could engage with the speaker's ideas far from the place where the speech had been first delivered, long after it was over. He could leave the crowded city and still perform the task he wanted to perform. If he's a little embarrassed by the scroll, as he seems to be, perhaps it's because he's in the company of the most revered oral communicator of all time, a man who never read from a written text and, it will soon emerge, didn't think much of the medium.