Conscious Computing


Personal technologies today are prosthetics for our minds.




















10 responses to “Conscious Computing

  1. lori todd

    When I began reading the above, I was struck with the analogous situation in the real world, irresponsible drivers. Not how you are now anticipating, the texting while driving issue. No, I was visualizing employers policing the unpaid personal activities of their employees while on the clock. As such, the blocking mechanism of a physical tracking device on a long range rig is not all that different from the blocking devices available for computers, in how they might most logically be applied in the physical world. A long linear trucking run is a better product of the price of the driver, gas and rig than, say, a run filled with diversions and stops to entertain the human machine at the heart of the rig. And the employee at the desk playing Bejeweled, Scrabble, answering personal email while Tweeting and IM’ing and uploading music will produce less virtual miles than one traveling a linear online route.

    In the self-policing world that the home desk provides, all of those online truck stops and diversions remain an option that each user must learn to navigate. Teenagers talk about how they learn better when they have music playing while they are working, and the study-focus for some is more sustainable with stops along the way to refresh their wandering minds with some playtime — much like our poor trucker stuck on a long straight highway with only CB radio and poppers to keep their mind from numbing over. Some distractions are undoubtedly all that stands between productivity and crashing, for truckers and processors alike.

    How to balance healthy distractions from those that overtake the primary goal? Each driver is different. A heart rate monitor in this house would capture rapid escalation every time someone passed by outside causing the dogs around this desk to bark frantically, alerting me as I work. The phone ringing, someone getting home, an alarming email, all can equally set off alarms in the passive monitor dutifully taped to the hard working brain’s body. Another level of distraction, monitoring the monitor.

  2. Wow–I never really considered a type of mindfulness when at the comp. Great post and brings awareness to an issue many of us face daily!

  3. I’ve always felt that someone who needed a software tool to save him from him(her) self was merely avoiding the real issue. Dealing with it directly, rather than trying to relying on something painfully artificial (“I must turn off the Internet because I cannot control my impulses”) would almost certainly lead to a better quality of both concentration and output. But we do live in a world of quick fixes and everyone-does-em shortcuts that are deemed worthwhile, or even necessary.


  5. This reminds me of recent reports on declining memory capacity (I can always Google it, why try to remember?) made even worse with smart phones, and declining attention spans and reading comprehension (if you can’t Tweet it, disjoin it). One wonders how bad things will get when Google glasses hit the streets. We’ll be staggering around in the street like zombies.

  6. It’s like you have been talking directly with my boss. He would love this article. Doing one thing at a time is his mantra. I’m still mastering it myself. The constant allure of checking to see if someone has replied to my email is a bit more powerful than me at the moment.

  7. Jay Holmes

    “evolve our relationship with personal technologies”

    Yes I agree. I have had this notion since PCs came tot he market. I gave my first computer to a friend. It was a Timex and required a cassette player for memory. He quickly became addicted to a stupid ping pong game!
    It impacted me because he was not some lifeless individual. He was (and remains) bright, well educated, well traveled and had already shared in couple of wild adventures with me in our youth. Seeing him in front of that TV screen playing ping pong was a startling eye opener.

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