The Blurring Boundaries between Public & Private Spheres

So part of this whole grad school gig involves giving talks at conferences. Yes, getting out of the library (or Starbucks) and away from the laptop and sharing your ideas in public behind podiums, while confidently clicking through PowerPoint or Prezzie slides. Initial reaction: Who, me? Answer from the academy: Yes, you must. With that in mind, to get my feet wet, I recently presented a paper at the Western Canada Communication Graduate Students Conference, more commonly known in these small circles as the annual “Nelson Conference,” since many students from the Vancouver area (primarily SFU’s School of Communication but we also had a fantastic speaker from Emily Carr), and the University of Calgary’s Communication and Culture Department “meet in the middle.”

(Side note, if you’ve never been to Nelson, BC, I highly recommend the roadtrip. Even for us lifelong BC residents, it’s a stunning drive and a great reminder of the natural beauty and expanse of our province. These are some roadtrip photos snapped on my iPhone).

Anyway, my talk was called “In Bed with Blackberries: A Cultural Approach to Everyday Uses of Smartphones.” It’s about how the common uses of smartphones, including the iconic Blackberry and more recently the iPhone or Android, can be viewed as simultaneously empowering and enslaving, due to their potential to blur the boundaries between public and private life. Drawing on the compelling cultural perspectives of James Carey, Carolyn Marvin and Ursula Franklin, it looks at the origins of the “always on” nature of ubiquitous accessibility, mobile work environments, and the permeable boundaries between work and home life. Beyond the popular debate of blaming or praising mobile technology itself, the talk focused on the different ways certain people use technology to challenge or reinforce social norms.

Despite the fact that my talk was slotted dead last after a long day of speakers, when everyone was itching to get to the pub, it was graciously received by an encouraging group of fellow scholars. Thumbs up for roadtrips, sharing ideas and picturesque towns in beautiful British Columbia. Already looking forward to next year.

As I’ve mentioned in this space before, I’m interested in digital media overload – how and why it happens, who it affects and how, what it means for relationships, work, society. Those may be academic questions but the topic is buzzing amongst creatives, pop culture and education spheres as well. TWU philosophy professor Bob Doede offers a “5% bonus credit to his Philosophy 210 students [who] abstain from all social and traditional media throughout the three month semester and journal about their experiences.”

Another recent article, “What Happened to Downtime? The Extinction of Deep Thinking & Sacred Space” by Scott Belsky, a business guy focused on creativity & productivity, outlines some possible hypotheses as to why we crave constant connection via technology (and if you’ve taken Psyc 101, Maslow has just sprung to mind), as well as some possible solutions for creating unplugged spaces:

“Our insatiable need to tune into information – at the expense of savoring our downtime – is a form of “work” (something I call “insecurity work”) that we do to reassure ourselves… Soon enough, planes, trains, subways, and, yes, showers will offer the option of staying connected.”

We’ve already accepted and maybe even embraced the fact that mobile technology is always with us on planes, trains, automobiles and even our beds (I just completed a grant proposal under a working title of “BlackBerries in Bed: Implications of Work-Life Conflict Intensified by the use of Mobile Technology”), but with the mention of a wired shower, I realized that may be one of the last frontiers where I’m able to think about the bigger picture of my day, my work, etc. I would say I get my best ideas while washing my hair, while on an eliptical machine (when the TV’s broken and I’ve forgotten my iPod), or in the liminal space between sleeping and waking. Those forms of rote action, rest or ‘downtime’ shift us from ‘focused-thought’ toward ‘ambient thought.’ You can read more on ambient thinking in this media & culture journal article by Alison Bartlett.

If you had a chance to listen to this Matt Richtel podcast I posted a while back, then you’ve heard about some of the research he’s discussed, including the fact that our brains can’t really ‘multi-task’ at all. In closing, I offer the final word to my friend John Kinmonth, Seattle-based writer and editor, who said it simply: “Unbroken focus is the new multitasking.”

It was lectures and ideas like these that got me thinking about new media and our uses of them in everyday life as important areas to think about, write about and perhaps research myself. Here’s a short video lecture by David Gauntlett, Professor of Media & Communications at the University of Westminster’s Communication & Media Research Institute. (Once upon a time, I was accepted there for my MA there but decided on Goldsmiths — life is too short to study everywhere you wish to). One of his latest ideas is “Making is Connecting” and he also uses Lego as a research tool in a pretty insightful way.

My MA supervisor David Morley has previously done some rather well-known research to conceptualize the ‘active audience’ — the idea that there is no singular homogeneous ‘media audience’ that passively accepts whatever is presented to them by the powers that be, but rather an audience is a diverse group of individuals who may oppose the message presented, negotiate it to reflect their own beliefs, or accept it.  The model is empowering and optimistic, and there are plenty of arguments to counter it. More on that soon… in the meantime, what do you think of the video?

PS – There are different ideas as to how/when/who was involved with creating the Internet and the ideas behind it. That affects our study and view of it in general. Was it a British guy who wanted to promote collaboration as Gauntlett says here, or the US army using it for their own intelligence purposes (also widely noted)?

One of the topics I tend to read and think about is media overload. For many of us, Internet connectivity is always present, either through computers or mobiles, very nearly 24/7 (yes, some people bring their mobiles to bed or to the loo). On the flip side of the exact same issue, there’s a whole sector of brilliant thinkers and researchers (some at SFU) who are looking into just the opposite – rural communities that arguably need the Internet much more than we do, and don’t have access. The reasoning is obvious from a business stand-point: there are less customers up in the hinterlands. But those are perhaps the communities that would most benefit most from online resources such as distance education, medical information if they live far from a hospital, etc.

A faculty member recently sent this story out to our School of Communications mailing list and I thought I’d share it up in this space as well: A Globe and Mail article about the Peace Region Internet Society in northeastern BC. This group has taken it upon themselves to help bring the ‘net up to the sticks, and they recently applied for Industry Canada’s approval and support to install higher-speed capabilities, but were denied due to some red tape including the fact that their organization “does not meet the definition for being Canadian-owned and -controlled.” (In other words, the telecommunications barons are protected through these arbitrary legalities from losing even a stitch of profitability to grassroots organizations). How much more Canadian does it get than hiking or cross-country skiing your own cables around the snowy regions of the province to bring the electric hearth of the Internet to your neighbours? In Twitter speak: #Industry #Canada #Fail.

New York Times technology writer Matt Richtel has been researching a fascinating series called “Your Brain on Computers.” He investigates how ubiquitous connectivity affects our brains, memory, safety and relationships. I had to laugh at myself while listening to his recent podcast, an interview on NPR’s Fresh Air: “Digital Overload: Your Brain on Gadgets.” When I hit ‘play,’ I had every intention of leisurely sipping my second coffee on this Labour Day Monday and simply enjoying the interview while staring out the window at the drizzle, but quickly found myself adding useful search columns on TweetDeck and even starting this blog post while I listened – giving in to the very multi-tasking ADD discussed in the interview.

A few sound bytes from the interview (although it’s all really good and you should really give it a listen for yourself whenever you’re not madly multi-tasking):

A good analogy for our current use of technology is food: “Some technology is like Twinkies, and some technology is like brussel sprouts.” We have to learn the difference and start managing our habits and usage accordingly. We need technology today, and we benefit from it immensely, but when is it more of a distraction than a tool?

Our minds are plastic – research is showing that ubiquitous connectivity most definitely affects our brain formation. Our frontal lobes develop last, and it’s the bit that establishes priorities and makes choices. It’s constantly under bombardment from other parts of the brain – sensory signals from blinking blackberries, for instance.

What is the neurological toll of being connected via wireless technology all the time? In a nutshell: less creativity and less productivity, though we often assume the opposite.

So much for multi-tasking: research shows that we can’t effectively do more than one thing at a time. Think of a simple non-scientific cocktail party test – if you’re listening to the person in front of you, you can’t fully listen to the person behind you (except to pick up on a word or name that piques your interest). You’re basically switching rapidly between tasks, not doing them at the same time. This rapid switching lowers your effectiveness at each of the tasks.

One of the most interesting experiments Richtel coordinated was taking 5 neuroscientists into the Utah wilderness – far, far away from a wifi signal for 5 days, to observe any perceptible changes in their thought processes. While some were skeptical at the outset, they unanimously noted a significant shift around the three-day mark of the trip, which Richtel calls “the 3-day effect.” (Many of us would attest to experiencing this shift on the rare occasion that we’re totally unplugged on holiday). While they didn’t claim to understand the exact workings behind the shift, it has opened up the opportunity to go on and do so.

With a new semester getting officially under way tomorrow, there’ll be many more ideas from this sphere banging around this space shortly, if I can find a moment amidst my multi-tasking to record them.  Thanks for passing by.