The more you e-mail, tweet, post messages on Facebook, and read blogs including this one, the less cleaver you become.  With the advent of ever more capable mobile devices, people are online all the time.  You see people texting while waiting in line for their coffee, while exercising, while going up and down elevators.  The opportunity to make the tiniest windows of time productive or entertaining becomes almost endless. 

There is a side-effect to all of this digitalization.  The unexpected side effect is that the higher digital input we receive the less time we get to process information, learn, and become creative.  In other words, we need down time to get new insights and new ideas. 

This is not new for me since being an educator I learned in my early years that when students daydream, they are basically restructuring their neuropathic signals and cooling their frontal cortex activities.  The free association increases their ability to learn new and complex information.  This is why our best ideas come to us in the morning while we are showering, shaving, or eating breakfast.  It is not when we are involved with complex activities such as computer data inputting, or constructing e-mails. 

What is best for ourselves, for our own fulfillment, and for societies’ overall success is the ability for humans to be creative.  It appears that in order to reach our maximum creative potential, we have to be less on-line.  Recently in the New York Times, Loren Frank who is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Physiology at the University of California in San Francisco stated that “Down time lets the brain go over experiences it’s had, solidify them, and turn them into permanent long-term memories.” 

While the down time for the brain may be a good recipe, it would be hard to sell it in this age of increasing digital addiction.  Almost a century ago Americans found it better for their people and society when alcohol was forbidden.  It was not a successful experiment, and I am not proposing that we have digital prohibition.  I am not recommending or suggesting such a solution.  However, I wonder where we are going when we would more and more replace the digital experience with a real one.  I recall when I was young and wanted to play with a friend, I went to his house, knocked on the door, and hoped he was there.  Now my grandchildren check out their status on Facebook, and do not even have to make a phone call, let alone, go out and make an unexpected visit to find that this may lead to unexpected real life experiences. 

There is a strange loneliness when out-going communication is more often with someone who is not next to you.  Digital communication is not the real thing.  People send e-mails when they find it hard to make or call or even face the person they have a message for.  I have seen so many e-mail trails leading nowhere other than to confusion or alienation between people, that I now choose not to read any e-mails that I am copied.  I find that these e-mails are usually attempts for people to cover their backs.  When you need someone, call her or him, or better yet make a visit.  Modern communication is great, but as it is with alcohol, moderation and responsibility are required to really enjoy it.

 

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 15th, 2010 at 11:25 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.