RICHARD RESTAK
The modern world leads to “modern nerves”
Increasingly, technology, especially information technology, is playing a pivotal role in determining how we think, feel, and behave. Much has been written on the countless ways the technologies of today save lives, save time, and benefit humankind. Far less has been said, however, on the down side of these technologies, or how the human brain is coping with the onslaught of rapid-fire information.
Even the most basic social interactions are driven by modern technology. In the first six months of 2002, Americans spent $214.3 million getting to know each other through online personals and dating sites. In this new and anonymous ritual of introduction, identities remain fluid and easily falsified. People shop for mates, companions, and lovers by posting their pictures along with resumes of their likes and dislikes in the hope that someone with similar proclivities, and who also finds their picture attractive, will e-mail them a response. The technology of the Internet, rather than face-to-face encounters, is playing a pivotal role in decisions of increasing numbers of people in regard to the people they marry or with whom they otherwise establish intimate relations.
A second technology, the video camera, puts us on perpetual public display. Like it or not, we’re growing accustomed (at least here in Washington, DC) to being the object of other people’s scrutiny. Omnipresent video cameras scan our every movement as we enter downtown buildings, stand on a subway platform, or walk along any one of hundreds of streets in cities across our nation.
A third technology, the “technology of cacophony,” is relegating silence to an endangered species. Recently, while I was in a local bookstore perusing a biography of Isaac Newton, a tattooed salesperson put on at high decibel Jim Morrison’s “LA Woman.” I was jarred by the disconnection between what I was reading and the frenetic background music.
A similar situation prevails in many restaurants these days, where conversation is nearly impossible, thanks to loud and all too frequently discordant music. A Wall Street Journal article a few years ago mentioned a trade secret among savvy restaurateurs. To encourage dallying patrons to relinquish tables, restaurants introduce some frenetic background music and turn up the volume. But, given the general dissonance that now forms the background music of many restaurants, one wonders what technique is currently employed to move dilatory diners towards the door.
Moreover, information technology is affecting us at increasingly early periods in our development. I recently encountered a young woman talking with great intensity on a cell phone while pushing a child of about 2 or 3 in a stroller. As the woman proceeded along the street, she ignored the child and confined her comments to the person at the other end of her cell phone.Unintentionally, she was teaching this child at a very early age an important lesson: An unseen person on the other end of a cell phone can exert a greater influence on events in one’s immediate surroundings than the person before one’s very eyes.
For millions of years, for most of humankind, the sense of presence has meant encountering something directly before one, something seeable, hearable, and touchable.But now, thanks to cell phones, the Internet, and other emerging technologies, presence is no longer a matter of physical location. We routinely immerse ourselves in multiple realities and presences. “Technological progress is always you-are-not-where-you-are,” as Satish Kumar puts it in No-destination: An Autobiography.
TOO MUCH, TOO FAST
Just where are all these trends taking us? As a byproduct of the shifts in the attention demanded by these technologies, a toll is being exacted on human powers of concentration and focus. The beginnings of this process can be traced a century ago to what was referred to at the time as “modern nerves.”
In 1891, Hermann Bahr predicted the arrival of what he called “new human beings,” marked by an increased nervous energy. A person with these “modern nerves” was “quick-witted, briskly efficient, rigorously scheduled, doing everything on the double,” writes Peter Conrad in Modern Times, Modern Places. Early examples of “modern nerves” included the projection speed of silent films with their deliberately accelerated movement (Laurel and Hardy, and The Keystone Cops, come to mind); and the shift in drug use in the 1920s from sedating agents like opium to the newly synthesized cocaine—a switch that replaced languid immobility with what was called “mobility mania.”
By 1931, historian James Truslow Adams was commenting,“ As the number of sensations increase, the time which we have for reacting to and digesting them becomes less...the rhythm of our life becomes quicker, the wave lengths...of our mental life grow shorter. Such a life tends to become a mere search for more and more exciting sensations, undermining yet more our power of concentration.”
In the years since Adams’ observation, our powers of concentration and focus have been further assaulted by the development and seamless integration into our lives of the communication technology of television, cell phones, and the Internet. The onslaught of visual imagery has played a major role in this process. Today, the images on CNN, rather than the words of The New York Times, relay the first news of world events. According to media critic Todd Gitlin, writing in Media Overload, “The most widespread, most consequential speed-up of our time is the onrush in images—the speed at which they zip through the world, the speed at which they give way to more of the same, the tempo at which they move.”
In response to the changes brought about by information technology, our brains have been forced to make fundamental adjustments in the face of constant challenges to our ability to concentrate and attend. Radio ads, in particular, present information at a numbingly rapid-fire pace that is often unintelligible. Our brains are assaulted by TV and newspaper charts and graphics designed to enhance our understanding. In study after study, however, the human brain has trouble recalling just what the rapidly spoken words were, or what the fast-moving graphics of a weather report, for instance, really mean.
On a daily basis in my neuropsychiatric practice I encounter otherwise normal people who experience dif- ficulty concentrating. In the words of one patient:
I no sooner begin thinking of one thing than my mind starts to wander off to another subject and before I know itI’m thinking of yet a third subject. I find it harder and harder to keep at a given task. I start reading a book, for instance, and I find myself reaching for the phone to call someone about something that could easily be taken up later. If anyone wants to discuss something with me I want him or her to get immediately to the “point.” That’s because after the first few minutes I won’t really be listening. That’s because I find it harder and harder to keep my attention focused on one thing for more than a few minutes. If a conversation goes on for too long I lose track entirely of what’s being said.
Certainly, part of this shift from focus to distraction arises from the many and varied roles we all must now fulfill. But the process of personal dis-integration also is furthered by the constant interaction with communication technology that exacerbates our attention difficulties. When watching TV, many of us routinely flit from one program to another as quickly as our thumb can strike the remote button. We watch a news story for a few minutes and then switch over to a basketball game. When we become bored with that, we move on to “The Animal Channel.” Nor is this difficulty maintaining attention helped by the social surroundings in which we find ourselves. In today’s world, we have to be willing and able to do more than one thing at a time, juggling competing, often conflicting, interests. The human brain, meanwhile, tries to cope by shifting rapidly from one activity to another. We’ve come up with a face-saving solution: multitasking.
PAYING THE PRICE
But multitasking comes with a price: Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD). Attention Deficit Disorder and its variations, once thought to be childhood afflictions, are now known to continue into adulthood. In their best-selling book Driven to Distraction, psychiatrists Edward Hallowell and John Ratey developed a set of criteria for the diagnosis of adult ADD. Among the most common manifestations are:
Do these traits sound familiar? Most of us can easily bring to mind one or more friends, relatives, co-workers (or perhaps even oneself?) who display one or more of these characteristics. And a person with ADD doesn’t have to display all of them. Three or four are sufficient, especially if they interfere with productivity and cause some measure of distress.
More common than full-blown ADD are milder forms of the disorder. Many personality characteristics formerly labeled as dysfunctional, such as hyperactivity, impulsiveness, and easy distractibility, are now almost the norm.This suggests that some form of culturally induced ADD is likely. According to Evan Schwartz, a cyberspace critic writing in Wired magazine, “With so many distracted people running around, we could be becoming the first society with Attention Deficit Disorder [as] the official brain syndrome of the information age.”
As our brains become overwhelmed by the onslaught of information, however,we find it increasingly difficult to participate fully in the reality that is directly before us. I’m not suggesting that anyone cancel their Internet account, destroy the computer, or throw away the cell phone. On the whole, communication technology is a positive influence that enables us to expand our mental horizons and enhance the power of our brains. Nonetheless, this technology presents us with some ironic paradoxes. Thanks to cell phones, e-mail, and other technological applications, we can increase the number of activities we can carry out simultaneously— although never as efficiently as when performing each activity separately. And we can enlarge our sense of presence by literally being in more than one place at a time and engaging with more than one person at a time.
LIFE AT A MORE PEACEFUL PACE
Finding a sense of peace in a chaotic environment need not involve therapy, medications, or the purchase of expensive equipment.We have only to take advantage of the fact that even when we feel the most distracted we retain control over the pace and patterns of our responses. We can turn off the television, walk out of the store or restaurant playing the frenetic or loud music, and give our full attention to the people in our immediate surroundings. We can resist the urge to answer a ringing cell phone while driving—there’s no shortage of studies proving that splitting our attention by simultaneously driving and talking on a cell phone (whether it is a handheld or hands-free device) increases the risk for accidents. Above all, we remain free to re-focus ourselves and concentrate on one thing at a time.
As French philosopher Blaise Pascal once remarked, “Most of the evils in life arise from a man’s being unable to sit still in a room.” Indeed, learning to sit still both physically and mentally is the first step to overcoming the negative effects on our brain brought about by our frenetic culture. Nor is the working toward that goal a prescription for physical inactivity. As suggested by Satish Kumar, “Walking is so important—place is sensuous, so you feel the air and you hear things. The speed of technological progress destroys sensuality.”
If we remain aware of the fragmenting effects of information technology on the cohesiveness of our mental processing, we can prevent ourselves from resonating to the over-stimulating and dissonant rhythms surrounding us. Most importantly, such awareness will enable us to use information technology to expand our mental horizons while at the same time allowing us to live at our own chosen pace.
Richard Restak (CC ’86), a neurologist and neuropsychiatrist, is the author of 14 books on the brain, including the recently published Poe’s Heart and the Mountain Climber: Explorations into Our Anxious Brains and Culture.
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