The Information Diet Part 5

"There's nothing on it worthwhile, and we're not going to watch it in this household, and I don't want it in your intellectual diet."

-Kent Farnsworth, summarizing his father Philo Farnsworth's view on the device he invented: the television[62]

My wife Roz is actually three people: there's Normal Roz, there's Email Roz, and there's Zombie Roz. Let me explain.

Normal Roz is a sharp-as-a-tack, sweet-as-a-pixie-stick, pretty-as-they-make-'em woman. She loves the outdoors, loves to garden, and loves to get her hands dirty. She combines a French love for life with the German love of hard work and efficiency. She's been known to say to me, whilst I'm in the midst of enjoying the miracles of central air conditioning: "Clay, yard work is just like that video game you're playing, except with a productive outcome."

But should she run across a computer screen on her way outside to try to plant corn in our 16-square-foot back yard, it's over. Especially if an email window is open. She will sit down in front of her computer, and (according to her) time no longer exists. Hours later, she'll look up at me, eyes bloodshot, and wonder why I'm asking her to come to bed. Time stands still for her, the day pa.s.ses, and she has no idea where it went. Email Roz has no sense of time. I won't lie-sometimes when she wants me to go do yard work I have left a laptop open between her and the door. Works every time.

But the scary Roz is Zombie Roz. Normal Roz can be on her way anywhere, and if there's a television playing anything from Fox News to HGTV, Normal Roz turns into Zombie Roz: transfixed, and mouth agape at the television. It's as though a freeze-ray shoots out of our TV, and once it enters her field of vision, she's powerless to resist it. I once watched her stare blankly for 15 minutes at a Spanish language cable network. She doesn't speak Spanish.

I've caricaturized my wife to make a point: information consumption makes you sedentary, and sometimes, it ruins your sense of time. Being sedentary is bad for your health.

The Connection Between Obesities.

It turns out that sitting for long periods of time isn't particularly good for you. Whether you're sitting behind a computer, sitting in front of a television, sitting in your car listening to the radio on your way to work, or sitting and reading this book, we are usually sedentary when we're consuming information.

In 2004, one physician coined the term Sedentary Death Syndrome to cla.s.sify all the diseases that come from the sedentary state. The effects: heart disease, diabetes, cancer, and yes, obesity. Some researchers are calling it the second largest threat to public health in America. What are we doing when we're sedentary? Few of us are meditating. We're usually consuming information.

New research points to sitting, especially amongst men, as a leading cause of death. Even if you exercise regularly, it turns out that sitting for long periods of time can be deadly. Dr. James Levine of the Mayo Clinic: "Adults who spent more than four hours a day sitting in front of the television had an 80 percent increased risk of death from cardiovascular disease compared with adults who spent less than two hours a day in front of the TV. This risk was independent of other risk factors such as smoking or diet.

And it's not just TV watching. Any extended sitting-whether that's at a desk or behind the wheel-increases your risk. What's more, a few hours a week at the gym doesn't seem to significantly offset the risk."[63]

Most of us aren't consuming information while jogging on a treadmill. If you have a desk job, it's likely that your desk is one that comes with a chair, not a pad on the ground for comfortable standing. But as we sit there in front of our computers, we are slowly killing ourselves just waiting for the next hit of dopamine to come into our inbox.

As of 2008, according to the UCSD, we were consuming 11.8 hours of information per day per person while we're not at work.[64] While some of that may be listening to music or the radio while we're running on the treadmill, most of those hours are spent sitting down.

Do us both a favor: stand up and stretch, take a break and walk around for a bit. I'd like for you to finish this book.

The nice thing about physical obesity is that you can pretty easily tell if you're obese. Body dysmorphia aside, one need only to fly on a major airline to check oneself-if you need a seatbelt extender, you're likely obese. If you cannot see, much less touch, your toes because your belly is in the way, you're likely obese. And if you don't want to try those tests, any trip to the scale will tell you whether or not you're suffering from obesity.

The dangerous thing about information obesity is that it's a bit more nefarious. It's difficult to tell if you are suffering from information obesity or have poor information consumption habits. It's impossible to know if you're ignorant and as we've learned, even if confronted with our own ignorance, it's likely only to make us run out and consume more misinformation in order to avoid being wrong.

Socrates' view on this was simple: just accept your own ignorance as the only thing to be certain about. This view is important to keep in mind, and a healthy foundation for an information diet.

Information obesity isn't new. Just as it was possible to be obese 500 years ago, it was possible to experience this new kind of ignorance 500 years ago, too. It was just more expensive, and you had to work much harder for it. But now we're living in a world of abundance, and as it turns out, information obesity has some pretty serious consequences for our productivity, our health, and our society.

[62] http://www.byhigh.org/history/farnsworth/Philot1924.html [63] http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/sitting/AN02082 [64] http://hmi.ucsd.edu/howmuchinfo.php.

Apnea.

Linda Stone is a quiet, deliberate woman who is obsessed with our autonomic nervous system: the stuff that we do relatively unconsciously, like make our hearts beat, make our skin perspire, make our mouths salivate, digest food, and, to an extent, breathe. She's constantly trying to figure out how technology affects this part of our daily function.

At the recommendation of her doctor, Stone started doing daily breathing exercises every morning to increase her respiratory health and reduce stress. Every morning, she gets up, goes for a short walk, and does 20 minutes of Buteyko breathing exercises.

When I met with her for the writing of this book, our meeting involved a few gadgets-the emWave2 and the StressEraser, small little contraptions that, when hooked up to your earlobe or the tip of your finger, show you how well you're breathing, and what your heart rate looks like. They're pretty simple devices that use a variety of blinking lights and sounds to calm you down and help you achieve an optimal rate of breath.[65]

You can even attach them to your computer to keep a diary of your breath. Stone often sits with a clip dangling from her ear and into her computer so that she can receive constant feedback there on her screen about her breath and heart rate, and continually try to stay in a relaxed, primed state.

After a few days of these breathing exercises, she noticed something interesting: just a few minutes after doing her breathing exercises, she'd head to work, check her email, and find herself holding her breath. Noting that there may be something wrong with that, she grabbed her gadgets and got to work finding out if she was the only one holding her breath in front of a monitor.

After about seven months, and about 200 interviews, Stone found that 80% of the people that she talked to and observed were holding their breath-especially when email came into their inbox.

So I decided to buy one of these devices and test myself during the writing of this book. I scheduled email checks only twice a day for one hour, and found that during those hours, sure enough, my breathing was more shallow and more irregular than during the hours in which I was writing.

Linda describes the problem with a term she coined: email apnea. But the irregularities go beyond email: I found that when I was dealing with all different sorts of incoming information online, my breath and heart rate became irregular. Any time I was dealing with something with a number by it or a queue, my breathing changed.

I noticed something else interesting when I dusted off my marathon training heart rate monitor and began to wear it to the office during the day: when I received a text message, my heart rate went up slightly and wouldn't go down until I read the text message or after about five minutes-the amount of time I suppose it took me to refocus on my work and forget about the message.

I'm uncomfortable with this method of consumption. I don't like a device giving even my most honest and caring of friends the ability to increase my heart rate with the push of a b.u.t.ton. It's too Pavlovian for me. And holding your breath has some serious consequences; not only does it regulate the amount of oxygen and carbon dioxide in your blood, but it also helps regulate your fight/flight response. A lack of oxygen comes with a variety of awful health consequences like diabetes and obesity.

[65] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/linda-stone/just-breathe-building-the_b_85651.html.

Poor Sense of Time.

When Email Roz looks up at me after a six hour inbox tour, she seems disoriented. How could it possibly be so late? She was just on her way outside to do some gardening. "What do you mean it's dark outside?" she'll ask. Her eyes are a little bloodshot-it's like waking a person up.

I get it. The same thing happens to me. When I sit down in front of a computer, it is as though the world around it disappears. Metaphorical blinders go on, and it's as though I'm almost inside the computer itself. I've been captured by my 27" iMac. When I step out from of a long run in front of a computer, it's almost as though I have to reorient myself in the same way that I reorient myself in the morning when I wake up.

Every time you get a new email, text message, or other kind of notification, you also get a little hit of our old friend dopamine. It turns out that dopamine not only puts us into a seeking frenzy, but it also distorts our sense of time. We can spend an hour inside of our email inboxes when it feels like just a few minutes.

Email Roz and her husband Writer Clay have done some pretty terrible things to each other-they've left each other at train stations, been late to dinner dates, and let entire evenings pa.s.s them by while they've sat together. Just a quick check of the email when we get home can often end up in evenings entirely lost to LCD screens.

Attention Fatigue.

About two years ago, I started to wonder: what the heck happened to my short-term memory? And where did my attention span go? I've written a little, pithy 140-character tweet, sent it into the universe, and in no more than five minutes received a reply. The only problem is, I've already forgotten what I wrote in the first place. I've had to go back, and look at what I said just five minutes ago to understand what the person replying to me is referencing.

Some days my brain just feels like it's in a state of frenzy, and I need to keep checking all the different things I need to check. There's just no time to read the academic papers or even to respond to that email that will take 20 minutes to respond to because there are so many new emails to read.

The new world of abundant information, as many have noted, is one filled with distraction. On any given day, many of us see thousands of advertis.e.m.e.nts cleverly designed to capture our attention. We come across scores of links on the Web, custom tailored just for us. Twitter streams across many a desktop, and Facebook's little red notification number beckons us with the details of our friends at every moment. Our emails, phone calls, and text messages can interrupt us at any second.

All of this wreaks havoc on our ability to sustain attention. Cory Doctorow points out that whenever we sit at our computers, we're tuning in to a new "ecosystem of interruption technologies."

Nicholas Carr points out in his book, The Shallows (W.W. Norton), that this chorus of siren songs of distraction is wreaking havoc on our brains. We've spent hundreds of years now training ourselves to pay attention to something as ba.n.a.l and repet.i.tive as text (compared to the things we used to pay attention to like food and predators) for long periods of time. Carr bemoans the influence that these new interruption technologies are having on our brains, essentially wiring our brains to click on the most insistent distraction.

Attention is something that requires cognitive energy, and it's something that we must build up. You don't train for a marathon by sitting on a couch and you don't help your attention span by giving in to the temptation of every distraction that comes across your eyeb.a.l.l.s. As information becomes more and more tailored, it becomes harder and harder for us to resist pursuing it, and our attention banks carry smaller and smaller balances.

Loss of Social Breadth.

Social anthropologist Robin Dunbar, alongside several other scientists, has an interesting theory: our neurocognitive resources have a limit to the total number of relations.h.i.+ps we can manage-and that number is somewhere between 100 and 250. Informally, the number is estimated to be 150, and it's called Dunbar's number.

Dunbar came to this conclusion by studying human tribes, hunter-gatherer types, and it's bound to remain relatively true today in the age of the social networks: there is a finite number of people that we can possibly care about, and while that number varies from person to person, it doesn't come close to the numbers that sit by our names on social networks like Facebook and Twitter.

If Dunbar is right, that means our ability to manage news from friends in new social networks, and to use it to enhance meaningful relations.h.i.+ps, is limited. By succ.u.mbing to our biases and falling into h.o.m.ogenous groups or epistemic loops, we eliminate the social inputs that bring us news we disagree with. Strong bias for some nonconscious consumers means cutting off meaningful relations.h.i.+ps with people we care about but may disagree with.

The overconsumption of specialized knowledge-whether it be political or technical or even sports-related-can make it so that the only thing you're capable of holding a conversation about is the thing that you've been so deeply into, and thus as your consumption of information around a particular subject becomes more h.o.m.ogenized, if you're not deliberate and careful, your social group too becomes a reflection of that h.o.m.ogenization.

Distorted Sense of Reality.

Cults work because they get their members to either convert the people around them or dismiss the nonbelievers as heathens. They're methodical in their epistemic closure, first building up a new lens to view a lens through, and should someone else see the world differently, that person is either branded a heretic (which comes from a Greek word meaning "choice") by the orthodoxy, or a "dead agent" in the realm of scientology.[66] Most major cults have some way of labeling the outsider.

Rapture tends to be an excellent topic area in which to see the effects of epistemic closure, confirmation bias, and poor information diets. Evangelical radio host Harold Camping famously predicted that the world would end and Judgment Day would arrive on May 21, 2011. Two hundred million Christians were to be taken to heaven before a global earthquake would destroy the planet.

Camping's organization, Family Radio, spent millions of donated dollars on more than 5,000 billboards across the country. He, along with his devoted followers, were certain that on May 21, the world would be filled with rapture and spread the word to everyone who would listen. The world did. The media-television, radio, newspapers, Facebook, and Twitter- were filled with news of the impending rapture.

Leading up to the event, a Yahoo group called "Time and Judgment," a group whose purpose was "to discuss the events that the Bible declares will unfold on May 21st, 2011," was filled with a thousand messages of people professing their faith and sharing plans for the rapture. Leading up to the rapture, the group fed off itself. It was as though people were competing to see who could have the most blind faith.

Marco M., May 5th: "I have looked at the Biblical evidence for the Rapture and Judgment Day on May 21, 2011. It is solid, convergent, inter-locking and replicable. So, I have no doubt whatsoever that May 21 is Judgment Day. And yes, I have quit my job."[67]

Tony V., May 7th: "I am a bus driver for NJ Transit and I get 4 weeks vacation. I took all my vacation in March. But I'm still working so I can spread the Word on my job and still have an income so I can continue to support FR with finances. After May 21 money will be useless, so I want to spend all my money in getting the Word out."[68]

Enow A., May 19th: "I just want to use this last chance to write to you to let know how fortunate I consider myself to be part of those spreading the May 21, 2011[sic]. Fellows.h.i.+pping with you has been a source of enormous blessing and encouragement against the fierce residence I am encountering. By HIS Grace we shall meet in HIS presence soon. G.o.d bless you all. Greetings from Cameroon."[69]

May 21st was a tough day for Mr. Camping and company. The New York Times' headline read on the front page: "Despite Careful Calculations, the World Does Not End." The believers had to face up to the facts: Mr. Camping's prediction, and all of their certainty, had gone down the tubes. But did they admit defeat and pack up their bags?

Ervinclark24, May 22nd: "How significant is it that this verse Joshua 10:13 tell us that the earth is essentially a day behind? Is this not saying that yesterday, May 21 was really May 20th?"[70]

No. For these zealots, it first meant searching for reasons why Mr. Camping must have been right. It was a time zone issue, or maybe there's another Bible verse? On May 22, Mr. Camping simply proclaimed that the rapture on May 21 was a spiritual judgment, and that the actual end of the world would happen on October 21.[71] Supporters were relieved.

G Agate, May 26th: "It was a Spiritual Judgment that took place on May 21. This may take a bit of time for it to sink into our human minds, Spiritual truth does not usually come quick or easy from the bible. But the main point and purpose of the day did come to pa.s.s, and most of us all were allowed to think of other things relating to it from the bible, in a literal way, so that we would get the message out to the whole world."[72]

Tony V., May 29th: "I love [Family Radio] and [Harold Camping] I learned a lot from his teachings, and I am praying for him. And I still believe that Oct.21 will be the last day, only because I personally checked out the time line of history... Now I can understand what the Bible says( No man knows the DAY OR HOUR OF CHRIST RETURN) but we can know the year. I send my love and prayers to all the brothers and sisters on this web site and through out the world."[73]

In the group, there were a handful of messages questioning their faith that judgment happened.

Britton95624, May 24th: "It seems as if we are hastily jumping to conclusions about all of this without having real biblical support for any of it. Just grasping at anything. Its almost as if people are saying 'well then it must have been a spiritual judgment because we can't be wrong.' That seems like pride creeping in. We are ALL confused right now, and I hope we aren't beginning to trust in our understanding over and against G.o.d. My dad said to me last night that, Solomon was the most wise person in the world. G.o.d clearly used Solomon for many wonderful things. But in the end of his life, he exhibited behavior that was not becoming of a child of G.o.d. Wisdom in a sense can be like money. It's not bad in itself, however when placed into the hands of a man in large quant.i.ties, we may not be able to handle it. It can bring you down."[74]

Raynakapec, May 25th: "I cannot bring myself to listen to FR anymore. I am sick at heart imagining how the dear people feel who put their beloved pets down, out of their love for them, in response to HC adamantly saying that after May 21 it would be h.e.l.l on earth. He repeatedly said 'It's going to happen.' I seem to remember someone asking him on OF whether the caller should put her pets down, and HC as best I can remember said 'Do what you feel best,' or something to that effect. What h.e.l.l they must be going through."[75]

What h.e.l.l indeed. The posts kicked off a flood of replies in the group, all- though sympathetic-a.s.suring the doubters and dissenters that the answer was to pray, and wait for the real judgment day on October 21, 2011.

If you're reading these lines, the end of the world hasn't happened.

The stories of Mr. Camping and his followers are severe cases of reality dysmorphia. These people aren't cla.s.sically ignorant. Most of them have scoured the Bible, and probably read it more thoroughly than your average church attendee. What's different is that they've picked up a bias, sacrificed something for it-their time, their money, or even their dogs-and now they're vested in it.

[66] http://www.apologeticsindex.org/d05.html [67] http://groups.yahoo.com/group/TimeandJudgment_May212011/message/8269 [68] http://groups.yahoo.com/group/TimeandJudgment_May212011/message/8289 [69] http://groups.yahoo.com/group/TimeandJudgment_May212011/message/8582 [70] http://groups.yahoo.com/group/TimeandJudgment_May212011/message/8789 [71] http://groups.yahoo.com/group/TimeandJudgment_May212011/message/9171 [72] http://groups.yahoo.com/group/TimeandJudgment_May212011/message/9164 [73] http://groups.yahoo.com/group/TimeandJudgment_May212011/message/9338 [74] http://groups.yahoo.com/group/TimeandJudgment_May212011/message/9126 [75] http://groups.yahoo.com/group/TimeandJudgment_May212011/message/9063.

Brand Loyalty.

Any human with an active and alert mind can fall prey to epistemic closure. There are plenty of less extreme examples to point to besides evangelical doomsdays.

You can see the same fervor in the eyes of political activists. Look in the eyes of a Code Pink supporter on the left, or someone looking for Barack Obama's birth certificate on the right, and you'll see the same kind of radical devotion to what they want to believe over the facts-and you'll also likely find that most of their social network is comprised of people who feel the same way.

Brand affiliations work this way, too. Attend a major corporate developer conference like Apple's WWDC, Google's I/O, or Facebook's F8, and you'll find the latest technologies and advances from these companies paired with sermons in the form of keynotes not just telling you why their software is the future, but why the compet.i.tion's values are wrong and misleading.

Attending Google I/O with my iPhone was a mistake. People looked at it, scowled, and scoffed. If I tried to explain that it was an older model-one that was out before any Google phone had been released-and that I was still on a two-year contract for the subsidized phone, and couldn't switch carriers, it didn't matter. Eyes rolled.

A few weeks later, I sat outside Apple's WWDC with the HTC Evo 4G (a Google-powered phone) to see what would happen. Again with the remarkable judgment over something so foolish as a phone-and coming from someone wearing socks with sandals!

Having attended the keynotes from both companies, I can see why the attendees of the conferences thought that way. For them, this wasn't about the use of a phone. This was about the triumph of good over evil. Through the lens of a charged up Googleist, I was but a poor infant letting Apple decide what was good for me. To the Appleist, I was dumb enough to fall for Google's corporate messaging.

It's West Side Story. About phones.