Stop and Think

Do you ever stop on the street and look up? Look up at the buildings, the sky or the trees? When you do this - for however brief a moment - your thoughts may stray to a far-off place. Somewhere other than the place you occupy right then. Something else might happen. Your unintended abstraction for the hustle and bustle of everyday live presents you with a moment of clarity, of presence. Of being in the 'Now' as Eckhart Tolle calls it. It’s often in these brief few moments of micro-contemplation the brain sub-consciously works out problems for us, processes seemingly unfathomable issues or prioritises jumbled thoughts and mental ‘to do’ lists.

The trouble is, these moments for all too many of us are becoming rarer. In the digital age, not only are we permanently 'on', so are our devices; phone, tablets, connected watches and other technology. Constantly demanding our attention to chat, message, check, alert, prompt, push and process information. It's a sensory overload 24/7. When can we switch off? When can we have a moment to just 'be'?

Why is it we allow technology to be so invasive? Who's serving who? On trains, in stations, shops and airports, look around you? Most of the people you see will have their heads down, staring at a screen in their hands. The 'heads-down' generation is not only causing a change in the way we communicate, it's affecting people's brains, making it unnecessary for us to be consciously thinking about now; where we are and what we are doing. The distraction of portable technology, always on and always prompting us is a worry. When do we muse, cogitate, consider, or just simply 'be'?

No doubt someone has an App for that!

In an article in Psychology Today Jim Taylor describes the impact of technology, on the way young childrens’ brains function and the changes taking place. He contends that exposure to multiple stimuli at a very young age negatively impacts on kids ability to concentrate and makes it more likely they will be easily distracted. However, on the upside, a loss of memory is being replaced with a far more developed capability to find stuff. It’s argued that the lack of a need to remember lots of facts enables the brain to engage in higher order conceptual thinking and problem solving. Nicholas Carr uses a great metaphor to describe how reading uninterrupted texts in a book has a very different result verses reading on technology devices. A book is like scuba diving; quiet, deep and slow paced. Reading on tech devices is like jet skiing;  skimming the surface at high speed with many distractions. We process information quite differently in each case and it has a profoundly different impact on our overall conscious state.

Perhaps we need to be more aware of these different states. Of how technology can affect us if we let it. And how we can use both states to our advantage if we so choose. Stop and think.