Be Here Now

Give this song a listen as you read through the blog:

The jarring thing to me about the panel on “Mindfulness, Technology and Society,” was that this digital device I carry around in my pocket has the opportunity to steal so much from me when I let it. And, wow – I really let it.

I have not been allowing myself these little “micro-breaks,” and it seems like the length of my attention span has been the biggest loser in all this. I find myself getting board halfway through reading a paragraph sometimes…ok, I’ll be honest - I actually get board halfway through sentences sometimes.

I do hold my breath while I wait for my emails to load, and that’s just sad.

I’ve been thinking about this for a couple of days and I realize that I spend an embarrassingly large amount of my life immersed in whatever is happening on my iPhone. I’m even more embarrassed about how much of myself I give to this little screen at the expense of those sitting across the dinner table from me.  I need to just re-learn what it means to be here now.

As this all relates to our class, I am getting more than just a little bit worried about the digitization of our interactions. For lack of a better term, “emerging media” is clearly an important, if not the most important, piece in how we communicate with others, both personally and professionally. But it’s taking the place of face-to-face human interaction too frequently. In concrete terms, I’m worried that we’re going to end up like the people in Wall-E.

While I assume the vast majority of people (hopefully all of the adults) who saw these characters understood the cautionary tale Disney was trying to tell with this movie. But I can’t help but wonder how many kids’ first reaction was that the hovercraft/television/computer thing was pretty cool.

As a person who manages a communications team at a fairly sizable and somewhat notable organization, I recognize that we need to use technology to tell the compelling story I think we should be telling. I just really hope that the work we’re doing now does not contribute to the death of the concept of “Be Here Now.”