HOW TO RECOVER FROM DIGITAL BRAIN DAMAGE

Towards a right-sized technological influence

Photo: Erren Franklin

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In the future, there will be a time when our descendants look back on the present age as one of unique madness. The rapid incursion of digital tech into our lives has been like a collective head trauma for those who have lived in the midst of its rollout. The first-order problems created by tech overdose may seem obvious — they have all been pointed out before — but the deeper consequences exist under a layer of numbness to the extent that we have not begun to reckon with them.

The main effects that I have noticed in my life: a sense of being constantly manipulated, an overstimulated type of exhaustion, crumbling of the attention span, and the inability to inhabit the present moment. Luckily, the totalitarianism we're dealing with here is more Huxley than Orwell, meaning that the model relies on your decision to opt into its pleasure/control mechanisms. The following is my attempt to write out a number of aphorisms having to do with the role tech plays in my daily experience. Some of them are reflections of how it operates, while others are more like rules or guardrails to help control how much I allow technology to influence my behavior. Adopting these guidelines has already significantly improved my quality of life to the extent that I wish I had written this document out sooner. I think of it as my plan for remaining human.

My suggestion for the reader is that they consider what I've written here and use it to inspire their own list of tech rules. Perhaps some of mine will be useful to you, while others won't be so applicable. That's fine — it's more a matter of finding out what works for you. The best test is to keep track of how a given change makes you feel and go from there. Judge by results.

— MB