Psychology of Technology

I’ve been called a skeptic, an alarmist, and a doomsayer because the focus of most of my technology blogging is on the risks of and what’s wrong with technology. I realize that I may sound like a Luddite despite the fact that I’m actually an early adapter and readily admit that I couldn’t function in my work without the plethora of technology that is currently at our fingertips. I guess the reason I come across as such a downer at times is that I assume that we all know about the incredible benefits that technology has to offer us; it’s not worth repeating what we all know to be true. At the same time, I recognize that, with the rapid advancements in computer and communication technology in the last decade, we haven’t had to time consider how these developments will shape our individual and collective lives.

I don’t have a problem with technology. To the contrary, it can be a wonderful tool for progress and change. Technology is already changing our lives cognitively, emotionally, and behaviorally; psychologically, physically, and socially; politically, culturally, and environmentally. My goal is not to suggest that we should reject technology, but rather to ensure that we have control over it rather it controlling us. The ultimate objective of this dissection of technology is to make certain that we use it with perspective and forethought to enhance our lives instead of indifferently or reactively to damage our lives.

I certainly don’t have all the answers. But before we can find answers, we must first ask the right questions. That is what I want to do, to ask the questions that need to be asked in the hope that minds greater than my own will help provide the answers.

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The Web, the Internet, and all of the new media that has sprung from them , have been a boon to the information age, making information available at our fingertips instantaneously. The sheer volume of information now accessible on line is staggering. As of a few weeks ago, there were more than 21 billion pages on the Web. Information continues to become more available to more people in less time; from web sites to email to RSS feeds to Twitter, we have input at an unprecedented rate and volume. Ironically, as the frequency of information grows, the length of messages shrinks (e.g., Twitter’s 140-character limit. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing; think of haiku). And, amazingly, the vast majority of this information is free.

For all its benefits, an unfortunate consequence of this torrent of information is that our “mental inbox” becomes overloaded. With our minds spilling over with information, our primary motivation is to empty it as quickly as possible. We typically use two “information survival” strategies when the inbox fills up. We output as quickly as possible without sufficient thought to either the incoming or outgoing messages. The obvious downside to this approach is that your input lacks thorough consideration and evaluation and your output lacks quality. Or, we are so overwhelmed by emails and text messages that we simply delete large swathes of messages without even looking at them. The obvious downside here is that important messages may be missed.

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The title of this post refers to an epiphany I had over the New Year’s weekend. The realization was  about my relationship with technology, namely, I was exhibiting some of the symptoms of technology addiction.

And I wasn’t the only one in my family with email and Internet issues. My wife, who doesn’t own a smartphone, would, by her own admission, be checking her email or surfing the Web when she should have been paying attention to our daughters. Clearly, neither of us have perfected the in-the-present art of Zen parenting.

For those who follow my Psychology of Technology blog posts, you know that I write about the dangers of letting technology take over our lives and the importance of maintaining control over our technology use. But, I must confess that those ideas had been, up to New Year’s weekend, more theory than reality. But I finally got the chance to test my theories cold turkey.

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Pete Cashmore, the founder and CEO of Mashable, the well-read social-media blog, suggested in a recent CNN column that real-time Web is one of the top 10 Web trends of 2010. Real-time Web means being able to send and receive information almost instantaneously.

Mr. Cashmore (great business name, by the way) argues that real-time Web is the next new thing for both technological and human reasons. From a tech standpoint, the simple reality is that it is now possible for people to communicate quickly and easily. Not only is there the 140-character updates of Twitter, but also real-time location (Foursquare), search (Google), news (Thoora), auctions (StuffBuff), reviews (Yelp), and blog comments (Disqus).

As for the human drive for real-time Web, the emergence of real-time media has altered our expectations about the availability of information and our ability to communicate with others. Instantaneous connectivity is now the default and anything less feels like we’ve taken the “Wayback Machine” (if you know what that is, you’re pretty old!) to those ancient days of the early 1990s. Also, there is neurological evidence indicating that this new media activates the same reward centers in the brain as do drugs. That little chirp, ring, or vibration of incoming tweet, email, or text message sets our brains a-buzzing. Simply put, both psychologically and neurologically, we want it, we want it now, we want it without any effort, and we want it to never stop.

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For those of you who follow my Psychology of Technology blog posts (especially here and here), you know that I’m a bit cynical about how technology is impacting us, particularly when it comes to how we define relationships. My worries aren’t so great that I’m looking to wipe out our communications grid with an electromagnetic pulse or anything like that (Instant Quiz: Can you tell me what long-cancelled television show was based on that premise and who starred in it?), but the ways in which new media have changed our ability to establish relationships have me concerned.

But this post isn’t about all the problems that new media may cause. To the contrary, I want to honor a truly wonderful aspect of this rapidly emerging and evolving technology. I’m talking about the on-line communities that offer knowledge bases, forums, and collaboration in an area of common interest.

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Of all the areas of life that computer and communications technology seems to be impacting the most is its influence on relationships. Mobile phones, texting, facebook, and Twitter are just a few of the ways in which relationships are being redefined, established, and maintained by technology. We have entered a new era of Relationships 2.0.

Many of these changes in the nature of relationships have been positive and productive. Online communities based around shared ideas and passions are a vital wellspring of information and action. Causes have been fomented and movements launched by online communities. New technology has allowed people formerly disconnected to establish relationships that have increased creativity, innovation, productivity, and efficiency. A personal example: I was the lead editor of an academic textbook and my co-editor and I met over the Internet. Through the entire preparation and publication process, we communicated through email and have never met in person and only spoke on the telephone once (to congratulate each other on its completion).

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No, I’m not talking about the U. S. Open Tennis Championships just concluded in New York. I’m talking about the invasion of Web site real estate by all manner of ads. Have you looked at your most frequently visited Web sites lately, I mean really looked at them. Go back to a few and take a really careful look. What do you see? That’s right, you may not have noticed it before because you’ve become so inured to them, but you may actually see more ads than content on any given Web page.

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