Interesting comment. I suppose that by 'we' I meant those of us (of whatever race, culture, gender or age) who have noticed a certain level of psychic interference, like static in the soul, that mediating technologies can cause, and are searching for a balance.
I want to add to my thanks for joining us, Mark, that this fine essay has a lyrical quality in its specifics with the closing lines and a breadth (Zuckerberg and Musk--what could go wrong?)-- that reaches far. "A joke, a kiss, a bee walking the length of a picnic knife, these are just what they are – uninterrupted except by us.
We take a walk in our lovely local park whenever we can, and just now the air is full of birdsong - you just can't hear it without a big grin spreading all over your face. But nearly everyone we see there wears earphones. They just can't hear it.
I grew up in the Atari and Nintendo generation, and there was a lot of inner life sacrificed to those screens, which simply predated the newer versions that we carry everywhere. Probably ten years ago I read an article (which I shared with my students then) about how people were beginning to avoid making eye contact on the sidewalk by pretending to be on a phone call. Now of course there's no pretense -- we live in the worlds in our hands.
This is all pretty daunting as a parent. Covid hooked kids even more on ritualized screen time. Parents were complicit -- we needed some time to work or exercise, so we caved, and now it's hard to claw that back. I sometimes struggle to get my kids to go play with the neighbors during what has become for them a fixed after-lunch appointment with the iPad or streaming TV. And this manifests in all manner of interruptions in conversations (an inability to listen long enough for someone to finish a thought) and in even being able to finish a movie on family night without a kind of Mystery Science Theatre effect (running commentary) run amok.
All of this is infinitely more complicated with split households, which is not an excuse to give up. I think modeling is sometimes the best we can do, and I need to be better at ignoring the phone when I'm in Dad mode.
You're kind not to say the obvious, Josh - that it's a whole lot easier to articulate a problem (or try) than it is to solve it. All of the issues/situations/problems you mention are real, and none offer an easy solution. Leslie and I raised the kids a few years before the tech-tsunami hit, so we had an easier time of it. The answer, as I suggested, is incremental push-back: a camping or fishing trip (no screens), a day at the ballpark (ditto), and so on. Here in Prague, people stare at their phones, too, but they also hang out in cafes and talk each others' ears off, and picnics in the park (with some slacklining or frisbees or dogs involved) are hugely popular with people of all ages. It ain't much, but it's something.
yep / nice job / and you brought it home again / 'what then shall we do ??" a revolution in fashion - what i call 'trendy' / the more people who are talking about it and thinking about it the more fashionable it will become / we are not disempowered as our politics would have us believe but we are powerful / we create our own internal world and we help to create a symbiotic consensual outer world / think minecraft / 300 million kids have played that game and from their own imagination created a shared world and a model of how to do it / yes i know it's a screen but as you said not all of it is bad / these kids will be tasked with re-building the world that we are busy destroying
Very thought-provoking article, thank you. I agree with some of your comments, eg. the opening. Except I do not agree we have outsourced anything. I am firmly in control of my inner life, my expression of that externally, and my use of devices. I control them, not the other way round. And it is fashionable now to claim we are under the influence - when the large majority are not.
I liken the situation today with that prevalent centuries ago when the Catholic Church was slowly and painfully disengaged from a mediation between man and God. The powerful guys wanted nothing of a wider spread of information, and a broader sense of personal independence. Centuries later, we are still wearing away at controlling effigies, mainly political now. We are doing fine, despite the non-stop messaging of the oligarchs. Blah, blah, blah... We are ever more thinking for ourselves.
I admire you for having control over the devices in your life – I truly do – but my sense is that people like you are the exception, and I was writing generally. Most of us struggle with the non-stop distractions of our wired world.
Also, to clarify, I wasn’t talking about thinking for ourselves per se (though I’d say we’re having some trouble with that, too, given where we find ourselves), but having the psychological space – the silence – within which to form our thoughts.
When E.B. White first saw a demonstration of the television in 1938, he realized that ‘elsewhere’ would come to dominate modern life. I (along with generations of writers from Daniel Boorstein to Sven Birkerts to Neil Postman, etc.), believe he had a point.
Does it come down to how we generalise from personal experience? Are both of us and others guilty of extrapolating our views on an untold population out there? This inference thing is dangerous.
Yet most of the people I associate with are not duped by pharmaceutical commercials. They do know they possess an inner life, and its importance. And I’m not only talking about the affluents, also about people with less resources.
It may be that our main point of difference is I do not live on the east coast of the United States. And while I appreciate the soul soreness of so many citizens living over there, I have to query some of the conclusions drawn by them. For all the awful inferences imagined, there is a stack of ordinary people giving a ballast to society. One cannot ignore that ballast, its positive presence.
I do not know what weight it will have when the reckoning comes as it will come. At the extremes I acknowledge nothing except emptiness. But what’s in the centre? How many millions inhabit there? What are they thinking and doing?
Ok, I’ll try to take a swing at some of these, but to do so I have to clear up some possible misconceptions.
First, I don’t live on the east coast of the US. I currently live in Prague (a bit further east) and though over 60 years I lived in New York and Boston, I also lived in Pennsylvania, Virginia, Illinois, Arizona and California.
Second, I’m neither affluent (alas) nor soul-sore. What I am is furious at the gang of criminals (and their enablers) currently taking over our country and, yes, concerned that our over-dependence on mediating technologies may be deepening our vulnerability.
That said, and despite everything, I have enormous faith in the American people (though I refuse to divide them into affluent, soul-sore easterners and “ordinary people”).
Lastly, I never suggested that people (ordinary or otherwise) don’t know that they have an inner life, which would be ridiculous. I was simply writing about the encroachment of technology on our lives, which is hardly news, and as true in Des Moines as it is in New York (or Prague).
ha !! you must be an academician / a special kind of programming / speaking in general people are not in control of their inner lives / they don't even know they have one / that's why they're so easily swayed by pharmaceutical commercials and all the rest of the commercials / if it were not so the manufacturers would not be spending billions on making them / what would be the point ?? "We are doing fine, despite the non-stop messaging of the oligarchs" i don't think we're doing fine - we're destroying our biosphere / our world bristles with nuclear weapons pointed at each other / fascists are taking over governments / alliances are lining up just as before just as if we had never learned that war is not a good thing
Thoughtful but i think it would go deeper by defining the "we" and the "us"
Interesting comment. I suppose that by 'we' I meant those of us (of whatever race, culture, gender or age) who have noticed a certain level of psychic interference, like static in the soul, that mediating technologies can cause, and are searching for a balance.
I really enjoyed this essay. Thank you for beautifully describing the ache of our time. And for giving us some hope and fire at the end, too.
I want to add to my thanks for joining us, Mark, that this fine essay has a lyrical quality in its specifics with the closing lines and a breadth (Zuckerberg and Musk--what could go wrong?)-- that reaches far. "A joke, a kiss, a bee walking the length of a picnic knife, these are just what they are – uninterrupted except by us.
"As are our thoughts."
Well-written, beautifully thought out.
Many thanks for the kind words, Mary - it was my pleasure.
I’ve begun reading back, with real admiration, through your essays as well.
Would love a comment ... In any case. your essay is a WOW!
I noticed that too Mary!
Thanks so for joining us! More on this soon ... xo ~Mary
Thanks, Mary - appreciate it. Mark
We take a walk in our lovely local park whenever we can, and just now the air is full of birdsong - you just can't hear it without a big grin spreading all over your face. But nearly everyone we see there wears earphones. They just can't hear it.
Very nearly the perfect example of what I was writing about. Thanks for that, and enjoy those walks, Anne.
I grew up in the Atari and Nintendo generation, and there was a lot of inner life sacrificed to those screens, which simply predated the newer versions that we carry everywhere. Probably ten years ago I read an article (which I shared with my students then) about how people were beginning to avoid making eye contact on the sidewalk by pretending to be on a phone call. Now of course there's no pretense -- we live in the worlds in our hands.
This is all pretty daunting as a parent. Covid hooked kids even more on ritualized screen time. Parents were complicit -- we needed some time to work or exercise, so we caved, and now it's hard to claw that back. I sometimes struggle to get my kids to go play with the neighbors during what has become for them a fixed after-lunch appointment with the iPad or streaming TV. And this manifests in all manner of interruptions in conversations (an inability to listen long enough for someone to finish a thought) and in even being able to finish a movie on family night without a kind of Mystery Science Theatre effect (running commentary) run amok.
All of this is infinitely more complicated with split households, which is not an excuse to give up. I think modeling is sometimes the best we can do, and I need to be better at ignoring the phone when I'm in Dad mode.
You're kind not to say the obvious, Josh - that it's a whole lot easier to articulate a problem (or try) than it is to solve it. All of the issues/situations/problems you mention are real, and none offer an easy solution. Leslie and I raised the kids a few years before the tech-tsunami hit, so we had an easier time of it. The answer, as I suggested, is incremental push-back: a camping or fishing trip (no screens), a day at the ballpark (ditto), and so on. Here in Prague, people stare at their phones, too, but they also hang out in cafes and talk each others' ears off, and picnics in the park (with some slacklining or frisbees or dogs involved) are hugely popular with people of all ages. It ain't much, but it's something.
yep / nice job / and you brought it home again / 'what then shall we do ??" a revolution in fashion - what i call 'trendy' / the more people who are talking about it and thinking about it the more fashionable it will become / we are not disempowered as our politics would have us believe but we are powerful / we create our own internal world and we help to create a symbiotic consensual outer world / think minecraft / 300 million kids have played that game and from their own imagination created a shared world and a model of how to do it / yes i know it's a screen but as you said not all of it is bad / these kids will be tasked with re-building the world that we are busy destroying
Hi Mark
Very thought-provoking article, thank you. I agree with some of your comments, eg. the opening. Except I do not agree we have outsourced anything. I am firmly in control of my inner life, my expression of that externally, and my use of devices. I control them, not the other way round. And it is fashionable now to claim we are under the influence - when the large majority are not.
I liken the situation today with that prevalent centuries ago when the Catholic Church was slowly and painfully disengaged from a mediation between man and God. The powerful guys wanted nothing of a wider spread of information, and a broader sense of personal independence. Centuries later, we are still wearing away at controlling effigies, mainly political now. We are doing fine, despite the non-stop messaging of the oligarchs. Blah, blah, blah... We are ever more thinking for ourselves.
I admire you for having control over the devices in your life – I truly do – but my sense is that people like you are the exception, and I was writing generally. Most of us struggle with the non-stop distractions of our wired world.
Also, to clarify, I wasn’t talking about thinking for ourselves per se (though I’d say we’re having some trouble with that, too, given where we find ourselves), but having the psychological space – the silence – within which to form our thoughts.
When E.B. White first saw a demonstration of the television in 1938, he realized that ‘elsewhere’ would come to dominate modern life. I (along with generations of writers from Daniel Boorstein to Sven Birkerts to Neil Postman, etc.), believe he had a point.
Does it come down to how we generalise from personal experience? Are both of us and others guilty of extrapolating our views on an untold population out there? This inference thing is dangerous.
Yet most of the people I associate with are not duped by pharmaceutical commercials. They do know they possess an inner life, and its importance. And I’m not only talking about the affluents, also about people with less resources.
It may be that our main point of difference is I do not live on the east coast of the United States. And while I appreciate the soul soreness of so many citizens living over there, I have to query some of the conclusions drawn by them. For all the awful inferences imagined, there is a stack of ordinary people giving a ballast to society. One cannot ignore that ballast, its positive presence.
I do not know what weight it will have when the reckoning comes as it will come. At the extremes I acknowledge nothing except emptiness. But what’s in the centre? How many millions inhabit there? What are they thinking and doing?
How do we answer these questions?
Ok, I’ll try to take a swing at some of these, but to do so I have to clear up some possible misconceptions.
First, I don’t live on the east coast of the US. I currently live in Prague (a bit further east) and though over 60 years I lived in New York and Boston, I also lived in Pennsylvania, Virginia, Illinois, Arizona and California.
Second, I’m neither affluent (alas) nor soul-sore. What I am is furious at the gang of criminals (and their enablers) currently taking over our country and, yes, concerned that our over-dependence on mediating technologies may be deepening our vulnerability.
That said, and despite everything, I have enormous faith in the American people (though I refuse to divide them into affluent, soul-sore easterners and “ordinary people”).
Lastly, I never suggested that people (ordinary or otherwise) don’t know that they have an inner life, which would be ridiculous. I was simply writing about the encroachment of technology on our lives, which is hardly news, and as true in Des Moines as it is in New York (or Prague).
ha !! you must be an academician / a special kind of programming / speaking in general people are not in control of their inner lives / they don't even know they have one / that's why they're so easily swayed by pharmaceutical commercials and all the rest of the commercials / if it were not so the manufacturers would not be spending billions on making them / what would be the point ?? "We are doing fine, despite the non-stop messaging of the oligarchs" i don't think we're doing fine - we're destroying our biosphere / our world bristles with nuclear weapons pointed at each other / fascists are taking over governments / alliances are lining up just as before just as if we had never learned that war is not a good thing