Escaping The Wired and Shallow Life

In their small but important book, The Slow Professor: Challenging the Culture of Speed in the Academy,  Maggie Berg and Barbara K. Seeber offer the following caution regarding our wired culture: 

"We need to get offline. Tom Chatfield, in How to Thrive in the Digital Age, recognizes that for the first time in history 'many people’s daily default is to be "wired" into at least one personalized form of media' (30). We now have, he says, two 'fundamentally different ways of being in the world: our wired and unwired states,' and we need to ask 'which aspects of a task, and of living, are best served by each' (31). Shenk, among others, tells us that research shows that 'it takes an experienced computer users an average of 15 minutes to return to ‘serious mental tasks’ after answering email or instant messages' (Shenk “E Decade” par. 4). If we are continually interrupted virtually, we cannot help but be fragmented. If we keep checking messages, we suffer from what Thomas calls 'self-induced ADD'" (9).

Berg and Seeber note that this daily default of being "wired" is behind much of our hurry and exhaustion, but perhaps also most devastatingly, our inability to concentrate. They are especially concerned with the hurry and disruption that currently typifies university life for professors, who are asked to take on more and more in their workload, often at the expense of real productivity, creativity, and effective teaching and scholarship. Such hurry and disruption undermine deeper thinking and concentration. Berg and Seeber's observations are fitting for everyone, not just those involved in the work of universities. 

Indeed, being online and having to check every status report, every like on Facebook, every click on a blog or email newsletter, leads to exhaustion. Perhaps just as devastating, it doesn't lead to greater creativity or, for that matter, the personal connections I believe I am seeking. In fact, being constantly online can lead to feelings of isolation. 

The constant tendency to interrupt myself to check statuses has meant that it is more difficult to concentrate. In reflecting on this, I've begun to think about my students and their classes and the need to help them also become aware of how being "wired" means being shallow and unable to concentrate. This is especially important for writing students, since writing takes great concentration. 

While I am engaged in reading The Slow Professor, I am in the midst of planning my own small rebellion. I plan to be spending more relaxed and "empty" time off line, where creativity, where ideas seem to be nourished and enhanced.