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
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