Humans on computers

Note: I’m publishing this, no further edits, about seven years after originally drafting it. I don’t even remember much about reading this book, but I’m glad I did, and I saw no reason not to keep my notes.

Any combination of factors might have encouraged the existential issues I’ve had lately regarding work and the internet at large. I know I’m a pretty good communicator, particularly with the written word. But I’m not always online, and this is something of a liability when it comes to participating in the strange pseudo-professional stream-of-consciousness narrative that is Twitter. (Or anywhere on the internet, really.)

Douglas Rushkoff’s Present Shock might have either exacerbated this or been an inevitable step along the way as I figure out where I fit in the Venn diagram of people who write on the internet and people who cook their own dinners and get enough sleep. (I don’t really get enough sleep. But I’d like to.) Rushkoff begins his second chapter, “Digiphrenia,” with a hard look at the scattered way that we do work today.

What I really liked about this is that Rushkoff doesn’t get angry at technology, or even at its enthusiasts. He’ll challenge an office to work without checking email for two hours, just to make a point about what a distraction it can be, but he’s not likely to then suggest that they simply do without email; he realizes that’s simply not how anyone does business today. His point is instead that we’re in denial about the fact that we’re no longer working at a human pace anymore: “The mistake so many of us make with digital technology is to imitate rather than simply exploit its multitasking capabilities.”

For me, it simply doesn’t seem reasonable or sustainable to be online around the clock ingesting information, much less commenting on it all. I’ll end up doing subpar work for everyone if I keep that up. But I don’t think this means I’m any less relevant to the conversation than the people with the most comments. I mean this without bitterness—certainly, plenty of those people are smarter than I am or at least better-organized, but at the end of the day, it’s just a conversation on Twitter, and probably won’t be one of much consequence within a week. Rushkoff emphasizes that we’d do better to focus on the medium than try to keep up with each single passing idea. I think that’s a start, but it still leaves me wondering exactly what’s expected of us as “content providers,” the people generating all these waves of blather.

It kind of comes down to the quality versus quantity argument, but I think from the perspective of someone working in this field, it’s important not just to advocate for this, but to find ways to be successful while remaining unapologetically mindful about our work and our processes.

I’m not even sure where to begin with suggestions for this, and Rushkoff doesn’t conclude his book with any firm ideas either. But I know we and our machines are sophisticated enough to make it work. I love the idea of a slower, more deliberately meditative future, where our social networks run deeper and creativity is protected rather than scattered. We can keep producing faster machines, and take things at more of a human pace ourselves.