Are you addicted to the computer?
If you find yourself unable to pull yourself away from the email, even at home in the evening… or you can’t NOT check your email when you hear the little “New Mail” chime, you’re not alone. You’re one of a growing number of people who have become psychologically addicted to the very devices meant to UNchain us from the office.
Update
In the course of researching this piece, I asked Richard Smith, a very smart guy in the area of computers and communications (and SFU prof) for his thoughts. He’s given me permission to reproduce his thoughts below. I wish my weekly tech columns were 15 minutes instead of just four!…
Tod,
You raise an interesting question and one that has been explored to some extent in both the media and in scholarship (although mainly in the media and the “scholarship” is a bit speculative at this point). I am sure you’ve seen what bloggers/pundits have to say about this but here are some touchpoints that are worth covering:
First of all, you have two questions, I think. The first is, WHY are people so attached/distracted/addicted to their email or tweets or whatever? The second is WHAT HAPPENS to them when they engage in this behaviour?
Leaving aside the thorny question of whether this is really an addiction or not - and the potential diminishing of the value of language when we clump crack addicts and twitter fiends in the same camp, not to mention the stasis that that sort of language dilution entails - the first question has a number of possible answers. Many of these answers are not so much based on new research as they are projections of past research on media use patterns onto the new media form. That’s what researchers do when they are called up by reporters and asked to make a quick comment :->
So, why?
1. habituation - a simple explanation and certainly something that we see in many forms of sentient life, including humans. If you do something often enough it becomes an unthinking, reflexive habit. I saw a horse, trained in horse logging, that when in the presence of a chainsaw couldn’t help backing up to the fallen tree even though it just happened to be in his paddock and he wasn’t even wearing a halter, let alone a harness. Humans become habituated to physical actions, too. I used to look left when I shifted my old VW microbus. I have no idea why, but it was an almost unbreakable habit.
2. stimulus/response - this, too, is a trait of many organisms, including plants. Humans will respond to a stimulous and if it involves a noise and a flashing light, well, we’ll like it all the better. Check out the slot machines in Vegas if you don’t believe me. If there is even the remotest possibility of a “treat,” there is almost no telling how often we’ll keep coming back.
3. status - this starts to get into some higher order thinking, but the argument goes like this: I am an important person, so I get important email and when I check my email, I am going to give back important answers and people will recognize how important I am. For example, some professors might compose a long email to a reporter, answering their questions, even though there is no real obligation to do that. Some people have speculated that this is part of the (initial) appeal of a blackberry: it is a status symbol and only important people get these things.
4. self construction - somewhat related, but I think sufficiently distinct from the “Status” argument, is the presentation of self argument building on Goffman’s work on how we use communication and communication media to “create” a self for ourselves. The tweets we post, the blogs we comment on and post, the profiles and status messages we write up on Facebook, all add to a constructed self that is being created and recreated every minute. In a fast-paced anonymous world the desire to distinguish ourselves from the pack is strong.
5. obsession - for some people these are manifestations of psychological problems, like obsessive compulsive disorder. If they weren’t doing that they would be washing their hands over and over, perhaps. Most of us, however, are a bit removed from that level of compulsion and could stop any time we wanted to.
6. utility - There is at least one simple explanation for some of this: it is useful. Like many forms of information gathering and processing, we do it because we get information we can use in our daily life and get things done.
7. fun - the other benign explanation is entertainment. Perhaps we are just looking for a laugh and we get that from our email/tweets/facebook pages. Maybe our job is boring and we just need some distraction.
So what happens?
If you stick with my last two, and perhaps the “self construction” explanation, I think you could decide that nothing much is happening or what is happening isn’t all bad. The habituation and stimulus response and status explanations might be a bit pathetic, but again not too dangerous. The obsession one, obviously, should be treated and their is both therapy and medication to help cope with true obsessive compulsive disorder “OCD”.
Less dramatic, but probably much more far reaching in its consequences, we have the multitasking/distraction problem. This falls into two domains, and both have some pretty strong research supporting them:
1. distractions are pernicious to performance because it takes a long time to get “back on track” after a distraction. Productivity in a workplace environment or critical/reflexive thinking in a social or political environment suffers. This is bad for business, bad for personal development, bad for democracy, even. Research has shown that a distracting email can result in up to 20 minutes of lost work, even when you get back to the task at hand.
2. multitasking may actually be harmful to our brains when taken to extremes. There is some research (recently notorious by inclusion in an Atlantic article) to suggest that people who multitask for long periods of time suffer impairment of capabilities and diminishment of key brain structures.
Obviously there are some problems with the “multitasking is inherently bad” argument, since many common activities are probably not a single task but several tasks happening at once (cooking and driving come to mind). Nevertheless, it is wise to be cautious about your distractions and keep them to a minimum. Most people find that a certain amount of distraction can be helpful but beyond that it starts to be corrosive.
Tech Investing 2.0: DemoCamps, Incubators, and Launch Parties
If you were invested in technology stocks back around 1999… well, it’s probably a year you want to forget. The tech bubble burst, sending hundreds of Internet companies into the digital wastebasket. But now, there’s a renewed interest in the sector and, in particular, Canadian startups. But will history repeat itself? The CBC’s technology guru Tod Maffin digs out some answers.
Links:
How to Deal With Webswarms (P.R.’s worst nightmare)
If you don’t yet know about digital swarms, you should. As technology guru and futurist Tod Maffin told the Edmonton IABC chapter in January, swarms may be the biggest threat to communicators today.
Take, for example, the case of one Winnipeg hotel. A blogger with a loyal readership had one unfortunate stay at this hotel, so he posted his complaints on his blog. Other bloggers discussed his experience on their own sites and posted a link to his original gripe. In response to them, our first blogger continued the discussion, linking to their posts…and so on, and so on.
The first negative post might have slipped, unnoticed, into cyberspace. But because of the network of links that developed, the post was noticed by someone very important: Googlebot.
Yes, Googlebot: the robot that combs the web and tallies the number of links that refer to a certain page. The greater the number of links, the higher the page will rank in a Google search.
Google page rank, or “Googlejuice,” as it’s known, is an elusive commodity your company should prize highly. Case in point: because of all the Googlejuice generated by the linking hotel bloggers, the bad blog review now ranks higher in a Google search than the slagged hotel’s own corporate website.
That’s the power of what Maffin calls “webswarms.”
If you doubt that the rantings of an obscure online writer can reach your target customers, consider the phenomenon of the Mahir web page. You’d probably recognize Mahir, the exuberant bachelor who searched for love via the internet, proclaiming “I KISS YOU!”
Originally, a link to that site was distributed to a mailing list of 73 people. From there, it was sent to four other mailing lists. Within 11 days, a link to Mahir’s personal homepage had reached many, many more. Mahir found worldwide celebrity (and, incidentally, a wife) through the power of a digital swarm.
Because they are so widely and readily accessible, blogs and message boards can quickly turn into a Google-fueled PR nightmare. The swarms of posters and linkers act quickly and are unpredictable. If they post a negative comment, for whatever reason, you can’t undo it. All you can do is react, and react well.
Maffin suggests that your organization develop a plan, much like a disaster recovery plan, to deal with negative internet swarms. “You must respond within hours, not days,” he says. “If a swarm is forming on Friday afternoon, it can’t wait until Monday.” You need at your disposal a plan which can be implemented the instant you hear a swarm buzzing.
Fortunately, Maffin offers some guidance, based on his personal experience dealing with a potentially disastrous swarm. Because swarms are not led by a leader—they are led from the inside—Maffin says, “You must to respond directly to the swarm.” That is, you must add a posting or comment of your own.
Imagine someone has posted a nasty message about the customer service at your company on a widely-visited message board. Respondents start agreeing, links are flying, and suddenly a negative swarm is forming. It’s time for you to participate in the swarm.
To help you quash the swell of bad PR, Maffin provides a handy mnemonic, based on the acronym S.W.A.R.M.:
S- Sweeten the Honey Pot.
Use a friendly tone with no jargon. “Thanks for pointing out our goof—we’re not perfect, but we’re trying.”W- Win-Win.
Make them feel like they have the upper hand. “You were right to feel irritated.”A- Advise Them What You’ve Changed.
Do this within the first few sentences. “Thanks to your posting, we’re changing our policy.”R-Right Wrongs
Correct online inaccuracies. Don’t let errors stand on the internet forever. Several popular web sites (including one run by Google) take snapshots of online content and store them in a searchable cache—forever.M-Make Friends
E-mail some of the individual contributors and invite them to keep in contact. “I hope you’ll continue to share your insights with me.”
Says Maffin, “It’s the cheapest focus group you will ever have.” Turning enemy swarms into allies might also be the best damage control you ever do.
AUDIO: Is HD-DVD down for the count?
Here’s the audio of the piece that will air on CBC Radio morning shows tomorrow. Why the 70s porno music? ‘Cause I was having a bad day and thought it would cheer me up. There. Now you know all of radio’s secrets. 
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