Saturday, November 29, 2014

ARE MY EARS BLEEDING?


          About 30 years ago, I read the novel Easy Travel to Other Planets by Ted Mooney.  Of course, I have forgotten most of the plot.  One of the things that I do remember is that some characters suffered from “information sickness,” which caused bleeding from the ears. 

         It was prescient of Mooney to posit information sickness in 1981, when the book was published.  I doubt, however, that he could have imagined the flow of information that now inundates us at every turn. 

         When Easy Travel was published, there were, after all, no smart phones.  There was no Facebook.  No Twitter.

         Now our phones are alive with text messages, emails, phone messages, and lists of missed calls.  If we don’t check for an hour, we might miss something.  I understand that many young people respond to bings and bleeps from their phones all night.  When do they sleep?

         I confess to being overwhelmed.  Take email, for instance.  When email started playing a role at work, it seemed, for a while, like a good thing—until the constant appearance of incoming emails became a permanent distraction.  And then there was the fact that you could no longer peruse a letter and take some time to ponder your reply.  A response was expected NOW, and 24/7.  If you had a smart phone, why couldn’t you be on call all of the time?

         Personal email is no less vexing.  No matter how frequently I unsubscribe from retailers, my email inbox still fills up with unwanted sales pitches.  I have sometimes failed to notice a personal email among the onslaught of junk mail.

         And now there is Facebook, with which I have a love/hate relationship.  I have tinkered with my settings so that I will not be bombarded with constant emails telling me who has posted what on FB.  But I find that I am tempted to check FB more frequently than feels comfortable, just in case I might be missing something.   I, along with a great many others, have been hooked by an intermittent reward system.    We are apparently more likely to repeat a behavior when the rewards are intermittent, than when they are constant.  Sure, much of what is on FB is of no moment, but what if there is a grandkid photo today?  Or a link to a thoughtful article?

         Of course, email and FB are also dandy procrastination devices.  I spent more time checking email and Facebook when I was writing a Masters thesis two years ago than at any time before or since. 

         And let us not forget the news.  When I graduated from college, I worked for a while as a reporter for a local paper.  There was a machine in the newsroom that constantly spewed forth a ticker tape with the latest wire service news reports.  When there was an election, we would work late to answer phone calls from people wanting to know about the returns.  Now, every computer and phone serves the function of a ticker tape, updating the news from moment to moment.  There is no respite.

         No wonder I am tempted to check my ears for bleeding. 

         So what is to be done?  My husband, who does not own a smart phone and would not be caught dead on Facebook, thinks the answer is simple:  Get off of Facebook.  I am not ready to do this.  I like seeing what my daughters and his sons are up to.  This is where they post photographs.  Also, I have reconnected with some people on FB and it is a nice place to share feelings when something important happens in the world. 

         Still, there have to be ways to step back.  Here are some things that I have done, and am doing, by way of interrupting the constant flow of information.  I would love to hear your suggestions.

         - I turn off the sound on my phone at night. 

         (While my mother was alive, I was constantly on call for the latest crisis.  It took me a while after her death earlier this year to understand that I could turn off my phone without letting anyone down.)

- I am trying to remember to turn off my phone while I am eating, especially when I am eating with others, including my husband. 

         - I carry my phone, but turn off the sound, when I am on a walk. (I feel safer having it with me when I am walking the dog in the woods.) 

         - I leave my phone in the house when I am gardening.  I turn off the sound when I am writing.

         - I am vowing to check Facebook less often.  I will start by backing off to every other day or every third day, and then re-evaluate.   (The photos, I remind myself, will still be there when I check in.)

         - I am contemplating a technology Sabbath—one day a week when I stay off of my computer and ipad and do not read emails on my phone.  (Have any of you done this successfully?)
        
         I can do this, right?  After all, until I was in my mid-thirties  telephones were tethered to the wall and had handsets that were tethered to the base of the phone.  There was no “voice mail.”  If someone called you and you weren’t home to answer, you didn’t know about the call. 

And, most of the time, it didn’t matter. 

Photo by chuttersnap on Unsplash