Information-polluted people need to organize and protect psychic space and quiet time, Levy believes, much as environmentalists organized in the 1960s to protect wetlands and old-growth forests.
Then, there was DDT, which did a marvelous job of killing mosquitoes — and much else in the natural world.
Now, there are home media centers, multi-tasking devices that allow people to sit in their living rooms, watch television, burn CDs, surf the Web and instant message.
At the office, according to a Wall Street Journal report on research carried out at the University of California at Irvine, workers flutter from spreadsheet to e-mail to Internet to phone about once every three minutes.
This week's conference seems likely to prescribe info-overload treatment that is similar to what Levy has prescribed for his own life.
"For me, one day a week is unplugged," said Levy, who has a doctorate in computer science from Stanford University and who, before moving to Seattle three years ago, was a researcher for 15 years at the Palo Alto Research Center. That is where researchers invented the personal computer, the mouse and much of the technology that Levy now frets about. "We had seen the future and it was us," he has written about his years there.
Because he is an observant Jew (and his wife is a rabbi), his unplugged day is the Sabbath. From sundown on Friday to sundown on Saturday, Levy does not use e-mail, the Internet, the telephone or the television. Instead, there is candlelighting, a dinner with friends and services on Saturday morning.
Throughout the rest of his week, Levy, 53, steals shorter blocks of time. He meditates every morning before work and, if possible, skips lunch at the university to take aikido lessons. These breaks, he says, are not about playing hooky. They are work.
"Our best work requires time," he said. "It is not loosey-goosey, touchy-feely spiritualism to see the value in creating space in our lives for reflection."
Article comments
1 - mike
oh my... this is so right on...
Silence.
wow...
--mj
2 - heruka
This is great! My wife and I have both been showing symptoms of IS meltdown and I recalled the meme from a novel I'd read years ago, but I couldn't recall the title. "Easy Travel to Other Planets"--a good read, if it's still in print. Information Sickness is a real malady and manifests as a perceived need to monitor every snippet of news, while simultaneously stifling an impulse to vomit.
3 - samantha
i thought that that was inspirational.