This week we look at the relationship between stress, technology and the modern worldview's apparent disconnection from reality. We have one new speaker, William Powers, author of Hamlet's Blackberry, and Heather Menzies speaks for a second time after her first appearance three years ago when we first looked explicitly at this area in episode 514.
Thanks to Active Ingredients for the William Powers talk.
Three years on, we return to the broad area of "information overload". Our first speaker, William Powers begins by describing how he got started on his book, "Hamletâs BlackBerry: A Practical Philosophy for Building a Good Life in the Digital Age". The book provides a useful historical perspective by citing a range of historical figures who were able to give some personal insight into the effect of new information technologies on their users. For example, the Roman philosopher Seneca, whose quote gives us this week's title.
"The merchant goes home after a day of hard work and excitement to a late dinner, trying amid the family circle to forget business, when he is interrupted by a telegram from London directing perhaps the purchase in San Francisco of 20,000 barrels of flour and the poor man must dispatch his dinner as hurriedly as possible in order to send of his message to California. The businessman at the present day must be continually on the jump." â W.E. Dodge, ~1850
Powers seeks neither to suggest that modern technology is an unalloyed benefit nor to minimize the benefits of universal connectedness. Rather, while carefully avoiding blanket prescriptions, he describes how much he has benefited from a conscious effort to limit his connectedness and he suggests that we are best able to appreciate the benefits of modern technology when we retain a detachment from modern technology. Citing Thoreau, he recommends that we nurture our inner lives and make it a priority to spend time instead with the people we love.