In a time when we are constantly connected yet isolated, searching for meaning yet distracted from our task, it becomes increasingly important to consciously cultivate an awareness of how our use of technology is affecting us. Expectations of speed, availability, and increased output are impacting our ability to truly innovate. As our expectations require us to act increasingly machine-like (analytical, logical, information-centered), our abilities to empathize, play, understand nuance, create beauty, and synthesize the big picture are at risk of being lost. We’ll explore ways of remaining conscious to this effect, and liberating ourselves from the poor inner habits our devices encourage.

1. Digital Distraction
Optimizing your human-ness
@benklocek

2. Maintaining Balance
This is a story about maintaining balance between
being online and offline, and experiments I’ve been
doing to explore it.

3. Human-ness
Empathy, play, nuance, beauty, big picture
“Creative genius is not the accumulation of knowledge; it is the ability
to see patterns in the universe, to detect hidden links between what is
and what could be.”
The Nature Principle, Richard Louv

4. Machine-like
Analytical, logical, information-centered, efficient
“Computer systems are doing much of the mundane work you used to
do, thereby (in theory at least) freeing you up–indeed, requiring you–
to do the creative work these systems can't do.”
How to Get Ideas, Jack Foster

5. *|
I hit the wall...from information fatigue.
Tired, poor ideas, scattered thoughts.

6. Go on a Media Diet
(Bit Literacy by Mark Hurst)
Relief!

7. Then I got an iPhone.
*....*...*..*.***
It started to fill up every spare moment in my day.

8. ********
My wife said,
“You’re on it all the time”.
Is that a problem?

9. We are all cyborgs, now.
ted.com/talks/amber_case_we_are_all_cyborgs_now.html
Let’s explore what happens when we are deeply
immersed in the online world.

10. Important Points
Extension of physical self: second (virtual) self,
external brain, overcome time & space (mentally)
Creation of self: time for self reflection, co-creating
each other via connections
“The most successful technology gets out of the way and helps us live
our lives.”
Amber Case

11. Concerns
I’m concerned that the cost of these conditions is
higher than we realize.

12. Cost of distraction
Relationships
✦ Skill of conversation.
✦ “What’s on my phone is more
important than you.”

13. Cost of distraction
Children
✦ Our example (It’s ok to ignore each
other)
✦ Intimacy (never alone together)

14. Cost of distraction
Education
✦ Information elevated above knowing.
(Quantitative over qualitative)
✦ Distraction (Avg. highschooler
sends/receives 4000 texts a month)

15. Cost of distraction
Business
✦ 57% of office interruptions are digital
($10k/employee/year)

16. Cost of distraction
Mental Health
✦ Mental fatigue
✦ Using executive functions
✦ Downtime is to the brain, what sleep
is to the body

17. Cost of distraction
Thinking
✦ Training my mind for quick-
thinking, distractibility over long-
form, thought-consolidating
thinking
✦ We’re training our minds for
distraction, not focus

19. *|*
My experience:
Split attention, two selves, time fragmentation.
Lack of mental self-sufficiency and power of observation.
“I’ll just google it”.
Lack of depth in life and thinking.

20. So, what to do?
“We are drowning in information, while starving for wisdom. The world
henceforth will be run by synthesizers, people able to put together the right
information at the right time, think critically about it, and make important
choices wisely.”
E.O. Wilson

21. Experiments
• “Dumb” phone (“Distraction” folder)
• Tech sabbath/vacation
• Bedroom sanctuary (no phone in the bed)
• Time for rumination (preferably overnight)
• Take a hike
"Off the Internet, everything is connecting you with the world. Everything."
The Nature Principle, Richard Louv

22. Wisdom
• A Whole New Mind, Daniel Pink
• More books, fewer blogs/articles
• Think first
• Garden
• Encourage the artist
• Inner quiet (intuition, dreams)
• More resources: bracia.com/human-ness
"What we think, we become."
Buddha

23. "If future generations are to remember us more with gratitude than sorrow,
we must achieve more than just the miracles of technology. We must also
leave them a glimpse of the world as it was created, not just as it looked
when we got through with it. "
Lyndon B. Johnson

24. Thank you.
bracia.com/human-ness
@benklocek