Contemplative Computing

What the heck is going on with comment spam?

I've had a rash of comment spam in the last couple days. Normally I get one or two pieces a day, which Typepad itself often catches, but in the let 48 hours I've gotten a couple dozen spam comments. Weird. Is Typepad having some kind of problem? Or am I just lucky?

Is "culture of distraction" an oxymoron? Joe Kraus on Slow Tech

Joe Kraus, a partner at Google Ventures, posted a talk last week about Slow Tech which I highly recommend. Here's the abstract:

1. We are creating and encouraging a culture of distraction where we are increasingly disconnected from the people and events around us and increasingly unable to engage in long-form thinking. People now feel anxious when their brains are unstimulated.
2. We are losing some very important things by doing this. We threaten the key ingredients behind creativity and insight by filling up all our “gap” time with stimulation. And we inhibit real human connection when we prioritize our phones over our the people right in front of us.
3. What can we do about it? Is this path inevitable or can balance be restored?

It should be obvious that I'm very much in agreement with 1) and 2), and have spent the last year working on an answer to 3) that is, in effect, "yes yes, a thousand time yes," as someone somewhere in Jane Austen said (my wife is rereading that last line and probably rethinking having married me).

It makes me wonder, though, if there is such a thing as a "culture of distraction." Not to take anything away from Kraus' talk, but is that an oxymoron? Culture brings to mind things that require a lot of concentration, the accumulated creative thinking and craft work of generations, thousands or millions of person-years. No one who is distracted can make a lasting contribution to their culture. Indeed, part of what scares all of us who worry about distraction is that a "culture of distraction" is a wasteland, the human equivalent of a television, tuned to a dead channel.

[h/t to Eugene Kim, who I hope to actually meet in person one day. And yes, I can mangle Jane Austen, but recite William Gibson from memory.]

What is Contemplative Computing?

The term "contemplative computing" may sound contradictory or complicated, but it's really pretty simple. Information technologies promise to make us smarter and more efficient, but all too often end up being distracting and demanding. Contemplative computing shows how we can use them to be more focused and creative.

Contemplative computing is something you do, not a service you use or a product you consume. It involves deepening your understanding of minds and information technologies work together, becoming more mindful of how you interact with technologies, and discovering ways of using them better.

There's a great Buddhist saying (echoed in virtually every religion) that pain is inevitable, but suffering is a choice. What the Buddha meant was we all face setbacks, get sick, and lose loved ones; but we can choose how we respond even to these difficult events. Likewise, I argue that in today's high-tech world, connection is inevitable, but distraction is a choice. The purpose of my book is to show you that that choice exists-- and if you feel overwhelmed by smartphones and email and social media, how to make different choices.

My book on contemplative computing, The Distraction Addiction, will be published by Little, Brown & Co, and will hit the bookstores in August 2013. Until then, these videos offer the easiest way to get a feel for the whole project.

Contemplative Computing, Lift11, Marseille France, July 2011.

This is an overview of the whole contemplative computing project, and the best 20-minute introduction to what I'm doing. There's also a transcript of the talk available.

Secrets of the Blogging Forest Monks, TEDxYouth@Monterey, November 2011.

This talk is about the issue of digital distraction, and how Buddhist monk bloggers and media entrepreneurs manage to spend hours a day online without suffering the ill effects that the rest of us consider a natural consequence of being online. It's a bit rushed at the end, as I was running low on time.

There are also a couple exercises I did with the audience that might not make a lot of sense on video.

Posted with Blogsy

Secrets of the blogging forest monks talk is now online

My TEDxYouth@Monterey talk is now up on YouTube. Thanks very much to Bob Cole and the rest of the CSU Monterey Bay team for a great event!

It's better for your audience to remember one thing than forget five

I gave a talk yesterday at TEDxYouth@Monterey (I think I got all the various Xes, @s, and other connectors in the event name).

via flickr

It was a very interesting event: there were some good speakers, and the setup was pretty great.

via flickr

I talked about blogging Buddhist monks and what they can teach us about mindfulness and technology. After it was over, I was struck by just how different the kids of arguments are that you can develop in writing and on stage.

When you're writing, you can be complex and multilayered.

In talks, the simpler you can make your story, the better. This is not to say that it can't be intellectually ambitious, just that you have to direct that ambition in different ways than you would in print. It's better if your audience remembers one thing you tell them than if they forget five. It does you no good if they think you're smart but can't tell people what you said.

I also came up with a pithy line that I may use in the future:

Distracted people never change the world. Focused people change the world. And mindful people change it for the better.

I just hope there's some truth to it. I think there are audiences that will like it.

"the transaction cost to procrastination has become zero"

Lifehacker recently had a piece on technology "crippling" as a strategy for boosting productivity:

Every advance in productivity afforded by technology has been quickly swallowed by a corresponding reduction in the barriers to procrastination. One possible solution: cripple your technology to restore those barriers.

I question whether "crippling" is the right word, though: it seems to me that there are lots of things we do, or can do to technology that is more like taking a suit to the tailor: you're not "crippling" the sleeves and pants by making them a length that fits you.

Merlin Mann's epic rant about productivity tools

I'm tempted to quite the whole thing in full: Merlin Mann's epic rant against the false promises of distraction-reducing systems:

[S]elling people a prettier way to kinda almost but not really write is not, in the canonical sense, "nice"—but, far worse, b) leaving your starry-eyed customers with the nauseatingly misguided impression that their "distraction" originates from anyplace but their own busted-ass brain is really not "helping."

Not on any level. It is, literally, harmful. "Helping" a junkie become more efficient at keeping his syringe loaded is hardly "nice."... Removing interruptions and external distractions that harm your work or life? Great. Counting on your distraction-removal tool to supplement your non-existent motivation to do work that will never get done anyway? Pathetic.

There is a serious point here, though, which is that some things are just hard; distraction-free is something you earn by being good enough to get into the flow of your task, or driven enough to not care about anything else. But don't let the tools either get in your way by being incomprehensible, or get in your way by being an excuse or a crutch:

These hypocrisies, paradoxes, and ambiguities that people get so wound up about—that many of us are constantly (impotently) trying to resolve—cannot be resolved.... [A]ll of these harrowingly unsolvable problems are immune to new notebooks and less-distracting applications and shinier systems and "nicer" self-"help" and pretty much anything.... Doing that annoying hard stuff is how you grow, get better, and learn what real help looks like. Even if that’s not the answer you wanted to hear. You get better by getting your ass out of your RSS reader and fucking making things until they suck less. Not by buying apps.

You don’t whine about distractions, or derail yourself over needing a nicer pencil sharpener, or aggravate your chronic creative diabetes by starting another desperate waddle to the self-help buffet. No. You work.... Achieving expertise and doing creative work is all horribly complicated and difficult and paradoxical and frustrating and recursive and James Joyce-y—and any guide, blog, binary, guru, or “nice guy” that tries to suggest otherwise is probably giving you a complimentary colonoscopy. Do the math....

Learn your real math, and any slide rule will suffice. Try, make, and do until you quit noticing the tools, and if you still think you need new tools, go try, make, and do more.