"Free your mind"

I have close friends who were assigning to their college students "unplugged" experiments years before it was fashionable to do so. 

The assignment is for students to disengage from all electronic media (broadly inclusive of television, cell phone, computer and related devices) for twenty-four hours and then to write a reflection on their experience.  The students' reflections were both predictable in places and alarming in others.  In today's Financial Times of London, Beppe Svergnini journals about his week-long unplugged experiment:  "A week without the world wide web." (Log in may be required.)

Of the more alarming reflections of both Mr. Svergnini's and my friends' students' are the reports of physical pain or discomfort that result from abstaining from electronic devices. According to Mr. Svergnini, on day two:   "A burgeoning – psychosomatic? – headache means I get little work done. The euphoria has gone and halfway through the day I realise I’m on edge – not least because my son has done a good job of hiding the iPad."  He is not alone.  Headaches.  Fidgeting.  Edginess.  These are signs of physical withdrawal not uncommon to those with chemical dependency, that is, drug addicts.

If addiction is a form of slavery, and if digital media affect neurochemical levels that in turn affect emotional dispositions, physical sensations (including "phantom vibrations"), and mental processes, then one way to view what Mr. Svergnini and these professor friends of mine are really exploring is a form of personal liberty.  What actions and influences "enslave?"  What factors impose the fewest dehumanizing constraints on our persons and lives?  What are the conditions in which humans can exist and thrive most as humans?  How best prudently to negotiate this difficult maze?

The answer to these questions need not exclude technology per se.  In fact, that would be impossible.  But it does require careful consideration of habits that most of us probably take for granted and of actions that we probably pursue unthinkingly.

This is not a theoretical, arm-chair conjecture of technophobes.  Mr. Svergnini was able, sans his normally trusty iPad, to read this in a paper newspaper:

An American paper announces: “The new mantra for tech firms: All things to all people, all day.” Google, Facebook and the rest no longer seek to enrich our days but to “own our every waking moment”. Worrying, but not till Thursday.

"I'm trying to free your mind, Neo" ("The Matrix" [1999]).

Corporate entities are seeking to "own our every waking moment" (my emphasis).  And it is "worrying" only tomorrow, once he (eagerly?) dives back into the digital cave, Plato's modern-day equivalent.

In a digital age, it is easy to think that the electronic media available to us allow us unfettered pursuit of whatever we choose, freeing us from the binding limitations that exist without them.  But does use of these media create, in stark contrast, a different form of bondage, bondage that we only recognize when freed, if temporarily, from them?

On day five, Mr. Svergnini reports:  "Some benefits are emerging. I’m less easily distracted and my concentration has improved. A chunk of cerebral RAM has been freed up. I am realising how emails influence mood by continually shuttling in unexpected information. For five days, I’ve been doing less but I reckon I’ve done it better."  Pursuing our work better.  Freeing up (part of) the mind.  Improved regulation of the flow of mood-altering electronic information.

My friends' students report the same "benefits" or at least observations.  Not all of them appreciated the experiment.  Indeed, many resented it.  But nearly all were persuaded by its end that their use of digital technology and electronic media was not neutral.  Most even agreed that many effects on them and their lives were not benign.