A few weeks ago I read William Powers' book Hamlet's Blackberry, but with the move and everything couldn't really write much about it. Still, it's worth noting.

Powers' book mainly consists of a series of case studies of reactions to new media innovations in the past– from the inevitable discussion of Phaedrus (does anyone read The Republic any more?), to the equally inevitable reading of Marshall McLuhan. The case studies are made in support the argument has three big parts.

First, people's attentions and desires swing between a need for connectedness and sociability on one hand, and the need for a rich inner life.

Second, digital and mobile devices create an imbalance between one's outer life, which is social and connected, and one's inner (private, thoughtful, and creative) life (or to a lesser degree, one's real life of family, home, etc.). They promise greater productivity and connectedness, but deliver neither:

[A]lthough we think of our screens as productivity tools, they actually undermine the serial focus that's the essence of true productivity. And the faster and more intense our connectedness becomes, the further we move away from that ideal. Digital busyness is the enemy of depth. (16-17)

There isn't a technological solution to this problem: approaches like GTD are "outward answers to an inward problem." (73)

Finally, the way to restore balance is to turn off those devices. Powers reports that his family instituted a Digital Sabbath, and after a few month found that

We'd peeled our minds away from the screens where they'd been stuck. We were really there with one another and nobody else, and we could all feel it. There was an atmospheric change in our minds, a shift to a slower, less restless, more relaxed way of thinking. We could just be in one place, doing one particular thing, and enjoy it. (228-9)

In turning off the modem, we weren't makiong the world go away. It was still out there. But… we'd recognized that our screens were infantilizing our life together. And now we were reacquiring, as a family, the 'capacity to be alone' that we had lost. It was like growing up again. (230)

Though digital devices are meant to impose order on our lives, when you remove them, a more natural kind of order returns. It's far easier to be in a room with others and stay there. It's easier to maintain eye contact and have meaningful conversations. It's even easier to be apart from one another. When one of us does drift away from the group, it's to be truly alone with a book or music or just our own thoughts, which now feels healthier. To put it another way, both togetherness and solitude used to be problems for us. Now neither is. (232)