The Socrates Dilemma: another thoughtful discourse about wise use of technology

Like lots of people who work in and around the business of books, publishing and information, I’m frequently asked about my predictions for the future of the printed word, specifically the book. In this all-connected-all-the-time world, apparently there are plenty of people (not just librarians) who worry that books may go the way of newspapers.

Hamlet’s BlackBerry: A Practical Philosophy for Building a Good Life in the Digital Age is the latest book to salve the worries of bibliophiles everywhere. The author is a Washington Post newspaper reporter whose family declares all weekends “digital sabbaths” –two-day breaks from smart phones, e-mail, and computer screens. Powers and his wife instituted this practice after realizing that the more connected they were with the world, the less present and connected they felt with each other, family, and friends.

Hamlet’s BlackBerry makes a case for balancing our use information technology without overwhelming our minds – a problem that has plagued mankind since the time of Socrates and Shakespeare, according to Powers. As it turns out, Socrates was the ancient equivalent of a Twitter addict who would overindulge in live orations that dragged on forever. His friends often dragged him away for long walks to encourage reflection. His pals evidently knew what every well-balanced person comes to understand—that downtime is actually very productive.

The modern version of Socrates’ dilemma is what Powers calls digital maximalism—the notion that being more connected is better. He predicts that our overstimulated, underfocused minds eventually crave downtime, reflection and the private pleasure of reading a book. This can only be good news for the future and the value of books.

Hamlet’s BlackBerry challenges myths without completely bashing the good things we get from today’s information technology. Here were a few myths I enjoyed hearing him bust:

Younger people are somehow more native lovers of information technology. Powers says the people who most comment on his book are under the age of 35. They totally get the idea that no form of technology trumps human interaction. Many are willing to admit that total immersion in IT has cost their generation something in the way of interpersonal skills. And they are anxious to reclaim those skills. I’ve got a few young friends in the communications profession (and elsewhere) who will vouch for that.

Information technology results in greater productivity. However useful Google is, knowing things because you Googled them does not always generate retained knowledge. When people are constantly inundated with information, they find it more difficult to do work that requires sustained attention and make thoughtful, analytical choices. There’s a cost to employers when attention is excessively fragmented. People are prone to mistakenly identify time in front of a screen as work. Often it is not.

What a great addition to the ever expanding discourse about the intersection between human connections and information technology! This is a great self-help guide for anyone who feels overwhelmed by the role of technology in their daily life.

P.S. Don't forget to enter the drawing for this month's free book, Straight Down the Middle, by Josh Karp. Visit www.leadingreads.com to learn about the book and enter.

Warning: this is your brain on the internet.

My year-long experiment with social media is officially over. I spent all of April and May rethinking the online habits that had just about hijacked my real life. After some honest reflection, I have decided there are only two social networking efforts that matter to me: 1) checking in with friends and 2) writing about personal development and books for anyone who likes that sort of thing. If you want to help me share content/gain readers, that’s great. If not, I’m writing just for you (when you’re interested) and the sheer joy of it. And that’s fine with me.

Oddly, I seemed to have less and less time for these pursuits when my online crusade was at its peak. A disturbing lack of focus was creeping into my work habits, whether I was cleaning the house, writing an article or planning a program. I chalked it up to an excess of divided interests, aided by my online behaviors. As if to underscore the reasons I decided to reclaim my own attention, I have discovered a slug of new books about how our brains can be morphed by internet behaviors.

Nicholas Carr’s new book, The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to our Brains explores the link between our online behaviors and the decline of deep concentration, introspection, contemplative thinking and creativity. Thankfully, the brain is a very plastic organ and Carr argues that it can be adapted away from our online tendency to jump from shiny thing to shiny thing. Carr says this sort of interrupted thinking is actually a more natural state for the human brain and one that has only been circumvented by mankind’s access to (get this) the printed page, which allowed people to become more educated, civilized and capable of sustained concentration. In other words, progress has come at the price of regression. Now there’s food for thought for anyone who has noticed a decline in ability to do sustained reading and thinking.

Decades after Albert Einstein’s death, his genius is still informing us. As a result of some of the research done on his brain over the past 20 years, the field of neuroscience has exploded with new information about brain function. Doug Fields, a researcher at the National Institute of Health, has written The Other Brain, a new book about some of the most recent discoveries in neuroscience. One of the biggest findings concerns the role of the glia, a part of the brain that was previously considered to be nothing more than glue that held the brain together. Einstein’s brain had an abnormally high number of these astrocytes, which are involved in complex thinking and imagery. The glia in our brains transmit conversations between neurons and rebroadcast them to distant areas of the brain. I haven’t read the book yet, but I look forward to seeing how this neuroscientist/author can make this research accessible to the reading public. (For fun background on this research, check out NPR’s story.)

Here is a title that seems destined for my reading list as I approach my 50th birthday: The Secret Life of the Grown Up Brain, by Barbara Strauch. In the strange brew that is now my brain, I alternate between thinking I’ve lost my mind and that I’m beginning to possess wisdom. (Believe me, the former is more obvious to other people than the latter!) Whether it’s noticeable to anyone else or not, decisions and tasks that were once difficult are much easier. I don’t repeat the same mistakes as often as I once did. Strauch’s book suggests the middle-aged brain is NOT on a steady decline. It actually improves in a number of areas with age. Hurray for experience, life’s greatest teacher! Strauch is a neuroscientist who has done extensive brain research and published a book on the teenage brain, in part because of her fascination with her son’s development. With her own aging, she became increasingly interested in the brain function of grown ups, people she defines as between the ages of 40 and 65.

While no one should dismiss the positive influence information technology has on us, there is a downside and people are beginning to notice, study, and write about it. We may be reaching a saturation point for handling stimuli, according to Maggie Jackson, author of Distracted: The Erosion of Attention and the Coming Dark Age. Researchers at the University of California-San Diego say the average American hears, sees, or reads 34 gigabytes worth of information a day, a figure that’s risen 5 percent each year since 1980.

As we exercise the part of the brain that multi-tasks, rushes and partially listens, the part that manages our ability to focus is languishing, says Edward Hallowell, M.D., author of CrazyBusy: Overstretched, Overbooked, and About to Snap. Another indication of shrinking memory is a tendency to move from one task to another without finishing anything, says Torkel Klingberg, M.D., author of The Overflowing Brain: Information Overload and the Limits of Working Memory.

Challenging the brain requires more active participation than watching TV or surfing the internet. When we are tired, we naturally choose the most passive forms of stimulation we can find, even though we may feel unfulfilled by how we spend our time. Winifred Gallagher, author of Rapt: Attention and the Focused Life, says we need to push ourselves toward more challenging mental work in order to improve brain function.

Here are a few tips from the experts to help manage online behaviors:

1) Notice your habits and whether you are focusing on the right things.
2) Don’t search for inane things on the internet JUST because you can.
3) Practice your sustained attention skills by reading a book, meditating and praying.
4) Make notes about things you’d like to read later to keep yourself on task.
5) Take breaks to recharge and unplug.

For my part, I’ll be taming my inner social media maven and trusting that a few faithful readers is good enough for this endeavor. If you are one of them, I thank you again for reading.

Finding your way to your next great career

Several weeks ago I listened to a radio segment about a guy fresh out of college, but without a lot of direction for his life. His solution to that problem was to try a lot of different jobs for a short while--a week or a month. After a year of working this way, he wrote a book about his experiences. My first thought was, “Ah, you stole my dream.”

I’ll just go out on a limb and admit it. No matter what I have done for a living, I’ve always had a wandering eye. With the exception of a two exceptionally deep love affairs with work, no job (or career) has ever been enough to hold me. My longest run was 12 years in a single profession, divvied up between two employers and a self-employment stint. I fought hard to get into that profession. After working my way in, I achieved a degree of mastery that was enough to merit interesting assignments, professional credentials, and awards from my peers. But I couldn’t imagine an entire lifetime of the same work. I wanted to know more about what was out there. Was there something else I was really intended to do? Was there someone else I had the potential to become? Doesn’t everyone wonder that?

Whether you share my wanderlust or life has dealt you some cards that force you to think about what‘s next, you may be interested in a new book designed to help you figure stuff out. The Leap: How 3 Simple Changes Can Propel Your Career from Good to Great includes access to an electronic assessment tool that allows you to evaluate how close you are to your sweet spot--the overlap between your passions AND your strengths. According to author Rick Smith, most people won’t be truly satisfied until they fine a career that combines both elements.

If you view your prospective career change as a slam-dunk effort where you figure everything out quickly and march through a series of chronological steps, you may be disappointed by Smith’s encouragement to experiment and iterate. Nevertheless, I have to say that this approach worked well for me. I volunteered and part-timed my way into both new careers. That gave me a chance to try before buying and allowed me to get experience in a low-risk way.

Evidently, I share a common denominator with other career changers: we don’t think of our changes as reinventions. With each change, I found I became a little more like myself. After I announced my most recent career change, my husband tried to make me promise that this would be the last one. I wouldn’t do it because I knew part of my life’s work would be allowing things to unfold, discovering how past experiences might fit together in ways I just couldn’t anticipate. For some of us, it’s the journey and not the outcomes that are going to matter most when we are laying on our deathbed. There are tradeoffs and compromises, especially if you choose something more than just what you are good at.

Perhaps the most important tip The Leap offers for fulfillment in work is to set your own standard for success--don’t just follow along. Without that standard, you may wake up one day with a life that someone else wanted--not yours.

A better kind of internet than the one you know (Part one in a series)

If you write, present, or conduct competitive research, here’s a resource you should add to your toolbox. Would it be helpful to you to have free, full-text access to an exhaustive archive of content from blogs, academic and trade journals, newspapers and other periodicals? Well, in most cases you already have that. You just don’t know it. Unless, of course, you’ve been in an institution of higher learning in the past five to eight years, and in some cases, not even then.

Public libraries offer patrons remote access to some very powerful (read: searchable) full-text databases. Most people’s eyes (and brains) glaze over when you share a statement like that. So maybe it's best if I share where to find them and how to use them. That way you can see for yourself. A few words of preparation for those new to the concept: it isn’t Shake n’ Bake, but it isn’t rocket science either. You’ll figure it out once you get there. But don’t expect to be good at search until you’ve done at least a little investigation.

Where to find free databases
If you live in Indiana, visit INSPIRE. Your IP address authenticates you as an Indiana resident. If you live elsewhere, search by your state’s name and a term like “digital libraries” or “database.” You should also visit your local library’s web site to see what additional databases they beyond INSPIRE. If you live in a community that has a college or university, you probably have access to an even greater universe of databases if you’re willing to go onsite or become a student. These are so powerful you might even want to become a student just for the access. Remember, friends, this is the same sort of content that corporations, marketing research firms and law firms buy for bazillions. Organizations don’t buy what they can get for free. The reason they pay is that the content is better (and more searchable) than what you get on the free web! Better, better, better. And more precise than an internet search.

As an Indiana resident, INSPIRE is free to you because it has already been financed by the Indiana General Assembly through Build Indiana Funds, the Institute of Museums and Library Services (under the Library Services and Technology Act and in partnership with Academic Libraries of Indiana.)

How to use databases in your life
Think medical research, business research, professional development, consumer research, or academic research.

In the next part to this series, I’ll share ways you can databases to your advantage. Meanwhile, if you're a writer, presenter, or sales and marketing whiz, get searching!

Can digital libraries remain relevant in a world brimming with free information?

Two of my life’s professions collided today in Indianapolis at the Blog Indiana 2009 Blogging and Social Media Conference. As a former corporate communications writer turned librarian, I left today’s meetings befuddled and thrilled. The communication realm I left in 2004 to become a librarian has changed so much that it I can’t help but review why I left just when things were getting so exciting.

I’m wondering about that presentation I’ll be making next week. It’s designed for a group of incoming college freshman to introduce them to Indiana’s digital libraries where they can use the internet to access thousands of full-text periodicals, from consumer magazines and newspapers to academic and professional journals. Librarians call these resources “the invisible web.” And they’re not free. Institutions of higher learning, Indiana’s General Assembly and other supporters set aside millions for powerful research tools like INSPIRE.

My presentation will differentiate these sources from the free web by showing the precision and superiority of their search features. I’ll emphasize the credibility of the sources. But these students are media snackers. How many of them will have the metal to research and read full text articles? Can they succeed in college without that skill? And what if that skill is so old school that it doesn’t prepare them for the demands that will be placed on them today?

Of the highly evolved humans that were at this conference, I’ll bet 90 percent know nothing about digital libraries. They haven’t needed them because they live in a world that teems with free information.

When libraries eagerly introduced these digital resources, we imagined that we finally had a tool that competed and perhaps even surpassed the web. That may be true, but we'll have to work hard to prove it now that the bomb of social media has been detonated.