Side Effects of Digital Technology

I t is said that travel broadens the mind. A recent trip to Italy for a conference in the Apennines and a workshop in Turin sponsored by the Institute for Scientific Interchange certainly provoked me into some broadening if unsettling thoughts. The first week's largish conference broadened my thinking incrementally, as do good conferences everywhere— with lots of interesting people and thought-provoking discussions. The second week's more intimate workshop , also very stimulating, added more increments of mental breadth. It took an unexpected by-product of the workshop to move me beyond incre-mental enlightenment. Fewer than a score of people attended the workshop, engaging in presentations , discussion, speculation, and planning. All this activity took place in a classroom with benches, chairs, and a scattering of desktop computers. Compared to conferences, workshops offer more integrated topics and more interaction between participants. To be successful, a workshop must move to a distinct conclusion through the participation and cooperation of the attendees, as this workshop did. I was disturbed by one common activity at this workshop, however. During the daily sessions, many participants used the classroom computers or their own laptops to deal with e-mail or, less frequently, to search the Web for items relevant to the current discussion. I found this unfamiliar behavior distracting and a little dismaying. Group activity, in my experience, must be given undivided attention. The other attendees, however, didn't seem to notice anything unusual. It dawned on me gradually that the most active e-mailers were also among the more voluble and imaginative debaters. These people could concentrate effectively on two things at once. Although I still felt somewhat uncomfortable with their style, my critical attitude gave way to admiration and a slight feeling of inadequacy. This revelation broadened my mind in a most unincremental way. The following Saturday morning, while reading the Financial Times, I discovered a delightful article by Jonathan Margolis (" Do You Really Have Time to Read This? " Weekend FT, Feb. 2002, pp. 8-10) that shed further light on this topic. Margolis described what he called the " busy-all-the-time " syndrome. In a discursive and reflective review of three books on time pressures, he observed that the technology designed to liberate us has actually made our lives busier. The time pressure we face " spans both our working and social life, the ubiquitous, and cheap, text message having put everyone in the world permanently …