[Paleopsych] CHE: Knowing When to Log Off

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Knowing When to Log Off
The Chronicle of Higher Education, 5.4.22
http://chronicle.com/weekly/v51/i33/33a03401.htm

    Wired campuses may be causing 'information overload'
    By JEFFREY R. YOUNG

    David M. Levy, a computer scientist who loves technology and gets more
    than 100 e-mail messages a day, makes a point of unplugging from the
    Internet one day each week to clear his head. Even so, with all the
    e-mail messages flooding in, with academic blogs bursting with
    continuous debate, and with the hectic pace set by an increasingly
    wired world, Mr. Levy says he cannot help but feel an occasional sense
    of information overload.

    And that, he says, is something to stop and think about.

    Mr. Levy, a professor at the University of Washington's Information
    School, is one of many scholars trying to raise awareness of the
    negative impact of communication technologies on people's lives and
    work. They say the quality of research and teaching at colleges is at
    risk unless scholars develop strategies for better managing
    information, and for making time for extensive reading and
    contemplation.

    "We're losing touch with the contemplative roots of scholarship, the
    reflective dimension," says Mr. Levy. "When you think that
    universities are meant to be in effect the think tanks for the
    culture, or at least one of the major forms of thinking, that strikes
    me as a very serious concern."

    At Washington, Mr. Levy is working to create a laboratory to explore
    those issues, to be called the Center for Information and the Quality
    of Life. He received a $25,000 grant from the John D. and Catherine T.
    MacArthur Foundation to help plan the center, though he is still
    looking for support for its operation.

    He and other scholars have already started a dialogue on the topic.
    Last year Mr. Levy organized a conference at the university called
    "Information, Silence, and Sanctuary" that brought together artists,
    philosophers, sociologists, and others, and was supported by the
    university and by grants from MacArthur and the National Science
    Foundation.

    Mr. Levy hopes the conversations will grow into a new kind of movement
    focused on people's informational environments and on reducing data
    smog.

    Scholars are beginning to realize "that our information ecology is
    endangered as well," says Mr. Levy. "We're just at the very beginning
    of even being clear about the nature of what the problems are."

    'Not Anti-E-Mail'

    Colleges were early in embracing the Internet and other communication
    technologies, and campuses remain some of the most wired environments
    anywhere. Although many professors say the Internet has enhanced their
    teaching and scholarship -- by better connecting them with colleagues
    around the world, by providing easier access to research materials,
    and by increasing contact with students -- it has also brought new
    challenges, such as keeping online tasks from becoming unwieldy.

    "When I sit down at a conference or lunch with a colleague, there's a
    pretty good chance we'll talk about being overwhelmed by e-mail and
    what we're doing about it," says Buzz Alexander, an English professor
    at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. "I'm not anti-e-mail. I'm
    advantaged and disadvantaged by e-mail like everybody else."

    On the syllabus for his course "What Is Literature?" he tells students
    not to contact him by e-mail. He says he tries to make sure he is
    available for one-on-one meetings to respond to any questions -- after
    class, during his office hours, or over coffee. "If they're in my
    office," he says, "I can say to them, 'How are you liking the course?'
    or 'How are things going?'" And he worries that he would not be able
    to keep up with a flood of e-mail questions from students who expect
    an instant response.

    Bill McKibben, a scholar in residence in environmental studies at
    Middlebury College, says the issue is more than just one of time
    management.

    "There's the real danger that one is absorbing and responding to
    bursts of information, rather than having time to think," says Mr.
    McKibben, author of Enough: Staying Human in an Engineered Age (Times
    Books, 2003). "What's only gradually becoming clear is not just a
    pragmatic drawback but an intellectual drawback to having so many
    trees that there's no possibility of seeing the forest."

    He says he is not immune from feelings of information overload, and
    that he has tried to work out strategies for dealing with the flood of
    communication he gets each day. When he is working on a book or is
    near a deadline, for instance, he only checks his e-mail messages once
    a day, in the evening. And he uses a slow dial-up connection at home,
    even though he could afford a faster broadband service, so that he is
    less tempted to surf the Web.

    "I think part of it is that my mind, and perhaps human minds in
    general, are geared toward novelty, and so it's difficult to
    discipline yourself to disregard each new incoming e-mail and each new
    incoming thing that you can instantly track down and print out," he
    says.

    Some scholars worry that even tools meant to help home in on specific
    information could have a negative impact on research.

    For instance, Michael Gorman, president-elect of the American Library
    Association and dean of library services at California State
    University at Fresno, wants to make sure students and professors do
    not become so enthralled with Google, which plans to scan millions of
    books and add them to its popular search engine, that they stop
    reading books the old-fashioned way.

    "We all know that, in Googleworld, speed is of the essence, but it is
    not to most scholarly research in the real world," Mr. Gorman wrote in
    a recent editorial in the Los Angeles Times. "Massive databases of
    digitized whole books, especially scholarly books, are expensive
    exercises in futility based on the staggering notion that, for the
    first time in history, one form of communication (electronic) will
    supplant and obliterate all previous forms."

    In an interview, Mr. Gorman stressed that he is not against
    technology, and that he is a strong supporter of digital-library
    projects for special collections and rare materials. "I'm all in favor
    of technology being used wisely," he said. "My basic point is the best
    thing to do with a scholarly book is to sit and read it," rather than
    skim an excerpt that is revealed by a search engine. "A book is not
    just an accumulation of facts, it's an argument, a cumulative piece of
    knowledge, and is designed to be read sequentially."

    Stopping to Think

    Since students are generally even more wired than professors, some
    college officials think students should be encouraged to take some
    time away from computers, cellphones, and other communication devices.

    "The amount of information that goes into a young person's head today
    is incredible," says David H. Landers, director of the student
    resource center at Saint Michael's College, in Colchester, Vt. His
    main concern is that students have replaced face-to-face contact with
    instant messaging and e-mail. "They're not going to have the same
    quality of interpersonal relations that will help them in a work
    environment," he argues.

    He says colleges should encourage students to get involved in
    community projects where they see what life is like outside of their
    high-tech campus bubble. "We recognize technology," he says, "but we
    can't become slaves to it."

    David Rothenberg, a professor of philosophy at the New Jersey
    Institute of Technology, took a novel approach to fighting overload in
    a class he taught called "Technology and Contemplation." He used a few
    minutes of each class session to have students meditate.

    "If you stop talking and have people sit silently for five minutes,
    that's a good use of time because people are so stressed out," he
    says. "It really had a positive effect." He says he is no expert on
    meditation, and that the bulk of the class dealt with texts that
    looked at the differences and similarities between technical thinking
    and contemplative thinking. He tried the techniques with the support
    of a small grant from the Center for Contemplative Mind in Society, a
    secular nonprofit group.

    Mr. Levy says his weekly day off from technology is part of his
    observation of the Jewish Sabbath (his wife is a rabbi), but that he
    recommends time away from computer monitors as a practice in itself.
    "I'm not suggesting that anyone else be Jewish," he says, "but rather
    if you think about the idea of the Sabbath, which is a time apart, a
    time to cultivate different qualities, that seems like a very
    important idea for our culture."

    He says information overload is one aspect of a larger problem that
    includes "fragmented attention, busyness, and the speed-up of daily
    life."

    "It isn't just the amount of information," he argues. "It's the
    expectation that we're going to go faster and faster and faster."

    Arthur G. Zajonc, a physics professor at Amherst College who is also
    director of the academic program for the Center for Contemplative Mind
    in Society, says many people take pride in replying to e-mail messages
    instantly, leading them to dash off terse, often uncivil, responses.
    He says he makes it a point to pause and rethink his outgoing e-mail
    messages for 30 seconds before sending them, to make sure he hasn't
    been overly curt. "Everything is so fast and also a little bit
    anonymous" with e-mail, he says. "So you have to pause to reflect on
    who this person is" that will be reading the message and how they
    might perceive it.

    Broader Issues

    Academics are not the only ones feeling overwhelmed, of course, and a
    growing number of researchers are looking at technology's impacts on
    the quality of life outside of colleges.

    Norman H. Nie, director of the Stanford Institute for the Quantitative
    Study of Society, at Stanford University, found in a recent survey
    that Internet use tends to cut into family time, and can lead to
    feelings of isolation. For the average respondent, an hour on the
    Internet reduced face-to-face time with family by 23.5 minutes per
    day, he says.

    "It's not whether to use the Internet or not use the Internet," said
    Mr. Nie in an interview. "It's how much time we really spend on it.
    Time is a hydraulic system. If you spend two hours doing one thing,
    you can't spend it doing something else."

    Mr. Nie admits to a fair amount of Internet use himself, and says he
    feels it has changed his habits, perhaps cutting into some leisure
    time.

    Eric Brende became so fed up with technology that he quit his graduate
    studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology a few years ago
    to spend 18 months living with his wife in a rural farming community.
    (He wouldn't say where exactly to protect the identities of the people
    he wrote about.) He argues that the negative aspects of using
    technology have become so great that we would all be better off giving
    up nearly all modern devices -- including washing machines, lawn
    mowers, and cars. He published a book about his experiences and
    beliefs, called Better Off: Flipping the Switch on Technology
    (HarperCollins, 2004).

    He argues that living more simply actually yields more leisure time,
    and forces people to forge greater bonds with neighbors because of a
    greater need for cooperation (such as for the occasional barn
    raising). And he notes that not enough people are looking critically
    at the impact of technology. "Whatever impact it's having," he says,
    "people are overlooking the negative aspects of it, one of which is, I
    think, a loss of a sense of leisure and contemplation."

    Mr. Brende, who now lives in St. Louis, has not completely switched
    off technology, though. He said in an interview that he occasionally
    checks e-mail messages at a nearby public library, and that he even
    has a cellphone, which helps him coordinate his work as a part-time
    bicycle-rickshaw driver. "You're not being disloyal to progress," he
    said, "by picking and choosing the kind of technology that best fits
    your needs."