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[digitalrefugees]

Attention is the beginning of devotion. The idea exhilarates, but it also saddens. If the attention of humans can be so easily filched by a machine—or, more precisely, the companies that operate those machines—then it follows that the capacity for devotion is damaged along the way. Any parent who has felt the twinge of shame that comes with the belated realization that a social-media feed has taken them away from a conversation with their child knows this to be true.

From The Atlantic on the legacy of Mary Oliver

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Early in The Gutenberg Elegies, Birkerts summarizes historian Rolf Engelsing’s definition of reading “intensively” as the common practice of most readers before the nineteenth century, when books, which were scarce and expensive, were often read aloud and many times over. As reading materials—not just books, but newspapers, magazines, and ephemera—proliferated, more recent centuries saw the rise of reading “extensively”: we read these materials once, often quickly, and move on. Birkerts coins his own terms: the deep, devotional practice of “vertical” reading has been supplanted by “horizontal” reading, skimming along the surface.

“Reading in Age of Constant Distraction” (The Paris Review). I love what he says here about the difference between intensive and extensive reading as well as vertical and horizontal reading. Wow. That’s good.

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Mr. Jobs seemed to understand the iPhone as something that would help us with a small number of activities — listening to music, placing calls, generating directions. He didn’t seek to radically change the rhythm of users’ daily lives. He simply wanted to take experiences we already found important and make them better.

Cal Newport, “Steve Jobs Never Wanted Us to Use our Phones Like This” (NYT).This is a great little article on what it looks like to move our phones away from “constant companions” back into the Jobs’ original vision for them. As he says, “The iPhone is a fantastic phone, but it was never meant to be the foundation for a new form of existence in which the digital increasingly encroaches on the analog.”

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The positive effect of returning to these analog activities is so pronounced that I’ve come to think of this strategy like a magic pill of sorts for curing the low-grade anxiety and existential aimlessness that define our culture of constant connection. This effect seemed particularly powerful for young people who have never known life without an accompanying screen. Like sleep and exercise, this analog cure seems to have few downsides, and its benefits compound.

“Digital Addiction Getting You Down: Try an Analog Cure,” NYT

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If I have learned anything in my years of therapy, it is that the human psyche defaults to shallowness. We cling to our denials. It’s easier to pretend that deeper feelings don’t exist, because, of course, a lot of them are painful. What better way to avoid all that unpleasantness than to keep company with emotive entities unencumbered by actual emotions? But feelings don’t just go away like that. They have a way of making themselves known. I wonder how sweet my grandchildren’s dreams will be.

From “Alexa, Should We Trust You?” in The Atlantic.

She’s exploring the present and future of what she calls a “genie in a speaker.” Lots of money and research is going into making them better. What will happen to silence? What will happen to conversations with real humans? What will happen when thought is eliminated from consumption?

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Filling the Silence with Digital Noise. We’re less and less capable of simply sitting in silence and/or doing nothing. They link it to something called the “vortex phenomenon,” which is a great phrase.

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My friend Grayson Pope has been doing some excellent writing on technology and the church:

A framework for assessing technology. Learn broadly, evaluate biblically, discuss communally, engage skeptically, revisit regularly.

Some biblical passages that talk about technology.

What technology has to do with the creation mandate.

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Thanks to my friend Grayson Pope for this one.

The author is listing some of the attempts by restaurants to encourage people to store their phones away during meals. Some are forceful and others just gently encourage. Some even offer discounts if you use the little boxes at the table. In the end, though, it seems like the initial appeal eventually fades into nothing more than a conversation piece.

Thomas Plante, a professor of psychology at Santa Clara University, says that chefs are going to have more luck using carrots than sticks if they’re hoping to dial back diners’ smartphone usage. “If they present it in a fun way, so that it’s reinforcing [the behavior], it could be a trend that people get on top of,” Plante says. “A lot of people know they’re addicted to phones, they know it is a problem, but they need structures in place to help them cope.”

[digitalrefugees]

She's exploring videos for children on YouTube--using the company ChuChu TV as a case study. As he says,

YouTube’s content for young kids—what I think of as Toddler YouTube—is a mishmash, a bricolage, a trash fire, an explosion of creativity. It’s a largely unregulated, data-driven grab for toddlers’ attention, and, as we’ve seen with the rest of social media, its ramifications may be deeper and wider than you’d initially think.

Kids aren't watching Nickelodeon, Disney Channel, or Cartoon Network (and other television) like they used to. They're online. Unfortunately, these shows are not nearly as regulated as television. She makes a case for how YouTube could be better for toddlers by regulating what they have access to, encouraging the use of the YouTube kids app, and more.

In the end, YouTube is the world's babysitter:

As YouTube became the world’s babysitter—an electronic pacifier during trips, or when adults are having dinner—parents began to seek out videos that soaked up more time. So nowadays what’s most popular on Toddler YouTube are not three-minute songs, but compilations that last 30 to 45 minutes, or even longer.

[digitalrefugees]

Video games are becoming more and more entertaining/engrossing (think: VR) while the workforce is becoming less and less enticing. More men in the United States between 18-34 are living with parents than romantic partners, which enables many of them to play lots and lots of video games.

On the appeal of video games:

They speak to a primal set of basic impulses—to world-creating, skill-building, achievement, violence, leadership, teamwork, speed, efficiency, status, decision-making and accomplishment.

[digitalrefugees]

There's an exploding industry of "white-noise generators" available with all kinds of sounds available: laundromat, dishwasher, television. These help your brain not notice the sounds that aren't worth your attention (because our brains are wired to wake us up to certain kinds of sounds). There's actually a definition of noise: "unwanted sounds that could have negative psychological and physiological effects" (Dr. Dedhia). The world is, in fact, noisier than its ever been. We don’t know what do with silence.

“On winter nights, the white-noise app on my phone is tuned to Air Conditioner: a raspy, metallic whir that sounds like the mechanical noise that might echo deep inside the ductwork of a huge commercial building. (Among the app’s other offerings are Dishwasher Rinsing, Crowded Room and Vacuum Cleaner.)”

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In a sense, this is where Digital Refugees end up. It’s the extreme reaction to the current digital experience. They’re reading Ted Kaczynski (the unabomber) and they’re having their own moment.

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This:

“Merton lived the public world, the world of words and politics, but knew that living in it had killed him. (“Thomas Merton is dead.”) He sought the peace of pure and silent contemplation, but came to believe that the value of that experience is to send us back into the world that killed us. He is perhaps the proper patron saint of our information-saturated age, of we who live and move and have our being in social media, and then, desperate for peace and rest, withdraw into privacy and silence, only to return. As we always will.”

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Social media has been blamed for ruining our democracy, shortening our children’s attention spans and undermining the fabric of society. But through it, I was able to be with Paulina out in the world again, to see what she sees, to virtually stand beside her and witness the people and places she moves through, in nearly real time. Not in a parent-policing role, but in a wonderful-world sort of way.

From “Rediscovering My Daughter Through Instagram” (New York Times).

It’s about who mom who can feel that awkward distance growing between her and her daughter as she becomes a teenager. Yet, it’s through her Instagram that she’s able to see what her daughter is like.

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Jethani calls this “anemic ecclesiology.” Jesus could have dictated his message through any means, both Wilgus and Jethani pointed out, but he decided to become incarnate. He became flesh and blood, and dwelt among his people to show his glory.

From “The Embodied Church in a Digital Age” (Christianity Today)

It tracks the story of a VR church, including the ways in which it is reaching people that no one is reaching (e.g., baptizing someone who can’t leave the house).

It’s asking questions about whether VR church is crossing some kind of line and ending up somewhere other than church. Is there something to being embodied that has to do with what it means to be the church?

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Will we see the rise of device-free communities?

One of the things I’ve been thinking about lately is whether we will see the rise of device-free communities: self-enclosed spaces with grocery stores, schools, etc. in which devices are banned.

Will there be an “Amish impulse” for digital natives? What will it look like in practice? How far will people go to get away from phones?

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"Plus, the militants have more conviction. In the age of social media, virtue is not defined by how compassionately you act. Virtue is defined by how vehemently you react to that which you find offensive. Virtue involves the self-display of a certain indignant sensibility, and anybody who doesn’t display that sensibility is morally suspect."

From David Brooks at the NYT