The speed at which information technology advances, and the rate at which its growth drives online commerce, remains remarkable even in an age accustomed to digital wonders. Last year in the United States alone online shopping exceeded US$3 trillion with the average consumer spending more than US$1,200; by next year this figure will likely surpass US$4 trillion with the average consumer spending US$500 more. The number of digital messages we exchange is equally striking. In addition to 24-hour broadcast news networks, and the nonstop data streaming from social media networks and instant messaging apps, one credible forecast suggests that by 2017 some 5 billion active email accounts worldwide will swap more than 200 billion messages per day.
It isn’t hard to see how our lives have been affected by these new forms of communication. Every day we encounter people who are too distracted by handheld devices to pay attention to their immediate surroundings. Often their inattention makes them less considerate of others – especially when driving a car, or crossing the street – and, occasionally, vulnerable to accidents. But even when there is no risk, our routine absences from our immediate environments are a recipe for a life half-lived. Last week, for example, a photograph taken in Redondo Beach, California showed a man on a boat obliviously texting while an adult humpback whale and her calf surfaced just a few yards away.
Sadly, we seem no less distracted in our working lives. Five years ago – practically a bygone era in terms of digital technology – the Harvard Business Review surveyed the challenges of information overload in office environments. It cited a study by Microsoft researchers who found that although most people did not believe electronic messages disrupted their attention, when diverted from a given task (usually to respond to email), the average worker took more than 24 minutes to return to what they had been doing. The Harvard survey also found that “knowledge workers” spent half their working lives answering email; that employees visited an average of 40 websites a day, and that the loss of efficiency resulting from this information overload cost the US economy some $900 billion a year. It hardly needs saying that all of these problems have become more pronounced since then.
In a recent book on the challenges of coping with the surfeit of information in modern life, Daniel Levitin recalls the nearly extinct practice of writing letters, and considers what we have lost. One of its virtues, he notes, was that “[t]here wasn’t anything about the medium that lent itself to dashing off quick notes without giving them much thought … so we didn’t go to the trouble unless we had something important to say.” By contrast, in the age of instant and almost free electronic messaging “most of us give little thought to typing up any little thing that pops in our heads and hitting the send button.” A characteristic complaint from one professional that Levitin spoke to was that “A large proportion of e-mails I receive are from people I barely know asking me to do something for them that is outside what would normally be considered the scope of my work or my relationship with them. E-mail somehow apparently makes it OK to ask for things they would never ask by phone, in person, or in snail mail.”
Levitin also notes that the myth of “multi-tasking” has encouraged us to take on jobs that used to belong to travel agents or salespeople, and to cram these extra tasks into their daily routines, further taxing our already overburdened brains. The cost of these distractions is considerable. Instead of actively listening to conversations, we check our phones; instead of watching live sports or cultural events, we choose televised coverage, which is often consumed while we surf the internet or send electronic messages. At an individual level our lack of presence is regrettable; extrapolated to an entire society its consequences on social, cultural and political life are far more troubling.
One of the joys of Caribbean life has always been the ease with which we can move about our cities, and “run into” friends and acquaintances who provide us with a range of updates on new births, deaths, marriages, accidents, burglaries, gossip and the other essential tidbits of an active social life. West Indian conversations have always been second to none, full of humour, verbal ingenuity, passionate (dis)agreements and loud laughter. Unfortunately, as our adoption of North American lifestyles and communication becomes more noticeable, we have also succumbed to the distractions of electronic media. It is hard not to notice the slow disappearance of active conversations and the increasing numbers of us who are thumbing smartphones and checking for updates instead of engaging with friends and colleagues. This is a shame, for while it may be impossible, not to mention undesirable, to forgo the use of new technologies, there is no reason why we can’t use them more productively and less intrusively, than we currently do.
