Spotlight: Time served

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The lure of tech devices and apps sometimes seems irresistible. That shouldn’t come as a surprise. Most are designed to keep us online and immersed for as long as possible, so we release brain chemicals that make us feel good about it — and leave us wanting more

TIMESERVED

Dr. Jim Cresswell researches the Not too long ago, I had a “wow!” moment first thing in the morning connection between tech and our — one of those moments that rupture minds. He knows tech is here to the rhythm of life and make me stop to reflect. stay and that it’s fundamentally I have a usual morning routine. I get changing us. Knowing why, how up, take some time for prayer and reflection, and then go about my day. and what we can do about it is one But something interrupted this routine way to retain control of and I didn’t really notice it … at first. It was a really powerful desire to one of our most precious grab my phone and check my email. resources –our time. I felt as if I NEEDED to check my email. As if it were a life-and death situation. It felt like there must be some fundamentally important email that desperately needed to be answered IMMEDIATELY upon waking. Until then, I hadn’t realized that I’d been habitually checking my email first thing in the morning for a couple of weeks already. >

Needless to say, this “wow!” moment wasn’t the positive one we hope for in the context of prayer and reflection. Rather, it was more like, “Wait a second. What’s wrong with me? Why do I feel this way? Where did this strange compulsion come from?” As a psychologist, I’m trained to wonder about human behaviour, and this moment led me behaviour, and this moment led me to take a closer look at technology to take a closer look at technology and why I was feeling this strange compulsion in the morning.

For the last couple of years, I have been looking into research on technology and how it ties to our minds. Have you ever experienced a moment where you can’t remember the words to a song when you’re chatting with friends, but you can sing the whole thing when it plays on the radio? This is an example of what psychologists mean when they say that the human mind is functionally integrated with the environment. Many people don’t realize that the way minds function — how they do what they have to do — is integrated with where we find ourselves and what we find ourselves doing. So when we say that thinking is functionally integrated with the environment, we are saying that the way people think, remember and feel is tied to what’s going on around them. Technology, like our smart phones and their applications, is a huge part of that environment.

Technologies of all sorts have always had a powerful relationship with our minds. Take, for example, what now seems like a taken-for-granted technology: the clock. Clocks and wrist watches radically shifted how we think about tasks and time. Before the widespread use of clocks and watches, how people thought about their day, what they had to do and how they had to regulate their lives, was completely different. How would you think about your day if there was no way to keep time and you’d never used a time device? The very way we think was changed through the technology of the clock.

The way we think, remember and feel is tied to what’s going on around us. Technology, like our smart phones and their applications, is a huge part of that environment.

What does this have to do with my “wow!” moment? My research found that in addition to technologies shaping the ways in which we think, there is one really big difference when it comes to applications. I can look at the clock and wish I had a couple more hours to sleep. The clock shows no mercy and does not change time to adapt to my desire to sleep in.

Current technologies like social media and various applications, however, are specifically designed to adapt and customize themselves to our desires.

Most current applications are intentionally designed to keep us on them for as long as possible, because the biggest commodity out there is our attention, and gathering data about where we focus it. Our “time served” on an application creates information, and that information is what companies can sell for huge profits. So, applications use sophisticated computational algorithms to adjust and adapt to our needs, making us want to stay on them — making us feel like we need them.

One tech insider, Jaron Lanier, a computer philosophy writer and widely considered the founding father of virtual reality, has written and spoken extensively about how adaptive technologies — apps — are often designed to reward us by manipulating the release of feel-good chemicals, such as dopamine, in our brains.

What was happening to me when I felt the need to check my email first thing in the morning? Basically, I was looking for the release of some feel-good chemicals, and my email application has been designed to offer that “hit.” It looks like coffee is being given a run for its money!

I don’t think I’m alone in my experience. Lots of people are familiar with that almost overwhelming compulsion to check a social media platform after leaving it, that feeling of disquiet when we forget our phone at home, or the urge to check our email “just in case.”

What do we do about it, given the ubiquity of technology in our lives? I don’t suggest we throw our smartphones in the river. Rather, I suggest we all take a few simple precautions — turning off notifications unless they come from real people, and tracking or limiting the time we are on applications, for example — to reclaim control that tech seems to be stripping away.

When we do that, we can make room for experiences where some prayer and reflection leads to a different kind of “wow!” experience. p

Dr. Jim Cresswell

is an Associate Professor of Psychology at Ambrose University. His research interests range from cultural psychology to cognitive science and literary theory. A key area of ongoing research is developing theory about the relationship between mind and culture.