I am also interested in the neurological and spiritual impacts of technology. There was lots of buzz in the past year about Nicholas Carr’s The Shallows, or at least his Atlantic article, “Is Google Making us Stupid?”. As a religion scholar, I am also interested in recent conversations about whether Google is also making us “spiritually stupid,” making us too distracted to participate in corporate rituals or private meditation. My dissertation focuses on contemporary hermits who live alone and spend much of their time in contemplative prayer, but most are also online quite a lot. So, I am interested what all of us can learn from them about setting boundaries and developing discipline with how we engage technology. I would enjoy discussing with others how you deal with this yourself, and also how this fits into your teaching. As I use more and more technology in my courses, I want to be intentional about helping students develop healthy habits.
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#1 by adellefrank on February 24, 2011 - 4:39 pm
I read a great article in the Georgia Library Quarterly that discussed information overload’s effects & some key strategies for dealing with it. “Information overload…@ your library” by LouAnn Blocker. It was the perfect segue back into my normal life after a much-needed vacation, and is part of my strategy for simplifying and cutting out some of the firehose-like information streams I’ve been attempting to consume so that I can focus on more important things in life.
Blocker cited the following works (in addition to Carr):
Bawden, D. et. al. “The Dark Side of Information: Overload, Anxiety and Other Paradoxes and Pathologies.” Journal of Information Science 35.1 (2009). 180-191.
Foster, Connie. “If you could freeze-frame the information flow, what would you do?” Serials Review 36.2 (2010). 1-2.
Gallagher, Winifred. Rapt: Attention and the Focused Life. New York: Penguin Press, 2009.
Hensiak, Kathryn. “Too much of a good thing: information overload and law librarians.” Legal Reference Services Quarterly 22.2/3 (2003). 85-98.
[ Cheery title below 🙂 ]
Jackson, Maggie. Distracted: the Erosion of Attention and the Coming Dark Age. New York: Prometheus Books, 2008.
Libava, Joel. “Innovate Ways to Reduce your email pain points.” openforum.com. American Express, 30 Jul. 2010. Web. 1 Aug. 2010.
Mano, Rita. “E-mail characteristics, work performance, and distress.” Computers in human behavior 26 (2010): 61-69.
Reichardt, Randy. “Digital Reference Overload: thoughts on how to deal.” Internet Reference Services Quarterly 11.2 (2006): 105-112.
Savolainen, Reijo. “Filtering and Withdrawing: strategies for coping with information overload in everyday contexts.” Journal of Information Science 33.5 (2007): 611-621.
Spiva, Jonathan. Information overload: we have met the enemy and he is us. New York: Basex, Inc., 2007.
#2 by Caroline Barratt on February 24, 2011 - 9:22 pm
I am very interested in this idea. We are experimenting with using Kindles in the writing classroom and I have long wondered if technology affects comprehension in any way or alters the way readers interact with the text (thinking, writing, etc.).
#3 by Pete on February 24, 2011 - 9:45 pm
I am also very interested in this topic, academically and personally. I find that, as much as technology offers me as an academic and social person, it has a soulnessness that adds up over time. I’ve wondered whether or how anyone who wants to cultivate mindfulness of any sort can incorporate the kind of technology we’ve all grown to love in a measured way.
I vote for this session with two hands and a foot.
#4 by estice on February 26, 2011 - 12:56 pm
I’d like to see this session, too. We need to consider the implications of involving technology in the classroom and the effects on our students.
#5 by brian.campbell on February 27, 2011 - 4:18 pm
I’m glad to see the response to this session idea. I just read an interesting piece on this theme. Perhaps most interesting for our purposes, it turns out next weekend is “National Day of Unplugging” I look forward to thinking through some of this together.
Here are the links…
Turn Off, Slow Down, Drop In: The Digital Generation Reinvents the Sabbath
National Day of Unplugging
#6 by Ben on February 28, 2011 - 10:16 am
I’ll second (or sixth) this idea.
#7 by adellefrank on February 28, 2011 - 12:41 pm
Yes, I’m a resource queen, but here is one more, REALLY FUN resources:
“Is technology rotting our brains?” (October 13, 2010) TechStuff podcast from HowStuffWorks.com
#8 by Brian Croxall on March 1, 2011 - 9:14 pm
So we’re having TCSE on the same weekend as the National Day of Unplugging? Apologies, all.
I like this idea, and I’d be interested to hear how people decide when and when not to integrate technology into the classroom. I love my tech-enhanced assignments, but I’ve also taught classes where I forbid the students from using laptops. It was in part to show them that we really could talk about a single poem for 75 minutes. But it was also a dare for myself, to see if I could do it. It worked.
#9 by Roger Whitson on March 2, 2011 - 1:29 pm
I like this idea, but I also wonder if digital apps might also enhance or enable the meditative practices you mention here. I’m thinking specifically about meditation games. Ian Bogost (www.bogost.com/games/guru_meditation.shtml) gives a great overview of these games on his website – along with a description of his Guru Meditation which
“the player must situate themselves perfectly still on the device, legs crossed, on the floor. The yogi will slowly rise if the player is properly situated. If he moves, the yogi drops and the player can resituate and try again without having to restart. Once enough still time has passed, the yogi begins floating and the timer starts. In joystick mode, the end result is the same, but the player indicates his zen by pressing up on the first joystick controller.”
As this happens
“Time passes subtly during the game. Clouds move. The time of day changes, roughly every hour, from day to dusk to night to dawn. The player can select a different starting time of day by waiting to choose a starting point on the splash screen. I have tested the game in both modes with several people — one of my students completely zoned out for a solid 20 minutes before I we had to vacate the room we were using, an example of the kind of experience I was looking for.”
#10 by Lauren Pressley on March 2, 2011 - 9:30 pm
I am really, really interested in this topic. I often think about how this generation changes our teaching, but also how our teaching responds to the needs/desires of this generation. Though I tend towards techy, I’m currently reading You Are Not A Gadget, which is keeps resonating with me as I interact with folks throughout the day.