“My interests are more in the impact of technology than the technology itself.  At the moment I’m particularly interested in everything to do with the way technologies impact the way we live, work, interact, etc.  That’s also the theme for this year’s Lift Conference in Geneva.

 

The main issue I’m grappling with is the increasing mismatch between the information coming at us and the way we’re able to manage or process that information; and I’m not only talking about information overload here.  Overload is a recurring feeling, and a look at history puts things in perspective. In 1613, English author Barnaby Rich wrote “one of the diseases of this age is the multiplicity of books; they doth so overcharge the world that it is not able to digest the abundance of idle matter that is every day hatched and brought forth into the world“. Every time a new technology comes we feel overloaded by it, the internet is no exception. 

 

What I am talking about is a broader issue. I am wondering whether technologies are really in line with the way we function, and if not what the consequences are.

 

After the initial euphoria over IT – which allowed us to do more things more efficiently than ever, it might be time to put technology back into its proper place; in some way we have to regain control.  If you look at the technological developments of the past 10-15 years, it is like a massive tank of information has been overwhelming us without asking for our consent. We have so many different connections plugged into our brain at the moment, the problem being that we don’t control those streams of information anymore: email, mobile, Twitter, Facebook.   Via these tools we have ‘outsourced’ to the outside world numerous access points to our brain. This is associated with several problems, the biggest being a loss of control (one more IT induced loss of control) over our capacity to think. Nowadays you can be interrupted and rerouted to another mental thread at almost anytime. It is becoming increasingly harder to think for more than ten minutes without a call, sms, email or tweet interrupting. Most users love these inputs; somehow they make you feel like being in the center of an active and gratifying social world, but I would argue that there is a price to pay for this. Being creative is harder than ever, because having ideas requires a high level of energy and continuity of thinking that is hard to achieve in an intermittent world. 

 

It might sound like an easy problem – don’t check your mail after 5, don’t leave your phone open – but we are reaching a point where expectation makes it impossible for one person to solve that problem alone. Five years ago I could take a week to answer an email, now if I don’t reply in 24h I am asked whether something is wrong with me. 

 

I believe that IT is slowly reaching a point where it becomes a bit counter productive, because our daily tools are designed for an infinite amount of attention but that is not the reality of our brains. 

 

Take mobile phones: there are different topologies of usage. Some people switch off their phone at night, and therefore it is always ok to call because when that person does not want to be disturbed their mobile is off. Others will leave their phone on at night so that emergency calls can always reach them. We need an indicator of these behaviours; I should know which type of user you are before calling you. Another example is email. I treat each message as an item of my todo list. Every person that writes to me adds something to my list of things I need to do in the short term. Others treat email as a flow, and will simply ignore a message they don’t want to answer. We need names for these behaviours, and anybody who wants to interact with me should know which kind of user I am.

 

Creativity and good decision making are not infinite resources, but our tools assume they are.  You should always be ready to be creative, to be productive. But that is not how things are in reality.

Openness and interactivity! How ironic is it that when you are very successful on a tool like twitter, you cannot really benefit from what it does well. Clive Thompson explained in a recent Wired column: “Once a group reaches a certain size, each participant starts to feel anonymous again, and the person they’re following — who once seemed proximal, like a friend — now seems larger than life and remote. […] So the conversation stops.” 

 

Success cuts you from the very purpose of these tools. We need a solution there too. Another example of why we will have to seriously rethink our communication tools. 

 

I think society needs to catch up with the technology it has created.  We need to regain a measure of control.  We need to define the norms and etiquette for using these tools effectively. Maybe the future may be less technology.  I heard about a bank here in Switzerland that is going to back to paper after a scare with stolen bank data. Maybe there’s a lesson in there, where less IT means more productivity and business.