The Internet. Connectivity. Google. Facebook. Such powerful, yet legal, drugs, must be supervised...
The Internet. Connectivity. Google. Facebook. Such powerful, yet legal, drugs, must be supervised. The only supervisors we have for the task? Ourselves, our own awareness.
Yoav Taler has posted some interesting thoughts (»a 4-part blog post to be precise) on people working in front of computers and the computer age in general.
So we’re getting digitized. Can’t ignore that. I urge you to acknowledge that computers are the new and most powerful drug of our age, saying that as a heavy user. Alongside the immense technological revolution, we pay a serious price. Parts of us are getting shorter while others long. Shortening or shrinking comes to physical form in ways of spinal problems, both along the back and the neck, headaches, eye-sight conditions, joint problems, breathing problems, stress and more. That’s just the problems claimed “physical”.
I do not necessarily agree with everything he writes there BUT: What he's saying about the addictiveness of the Internet and computer work I couldn't agree more!
Very good and insightful tips! A recommended read! Here's »Pt. 4 of the post which I deem the most interesting:
We can sit in front of a machine for 3 hours straight, if not 6, fully collapsed, frozen yet not sleepy, until a point in time in which we zombie-out. That miraculous devil we call “Internet” is so magnetizing that it enables us to forget our physique, leave one brain part running at full speed and hibernate everything else. Doing that, we accumulate emails, knowledge, music, money, facebook friends and one more thing – stress. Caused by a rather new, unhealthy balance, a web-age condition.
The Internet. Connectivity. Google. Facebook. Such powerful, yet legal, drugs, must be supervised. The only supervisors we have for the task? Ourselves, our own awareness.When we start an awareness training process, usually at an adult age, we want to undo old habits and try to maintain, for example, a new way of sitting at work. We then find out that we forget that new way very quickly; A “collapse-freeze” condition we can maintain for 6 hours straight, while the opposite condition can be maintained for barely 6 seconds. Sad, but true. How can you expect a lifelong habit to just evaporate? New, learnt conditions cannot take over ourselves like a charm. It takes time, a long time, and we need to maintain a refresh-rate for ourselves, reminding and re-channeling the new condition with conscious instructions.Nothing’s perfect. You cannot “succeed” in conditioning yourself; Don’t be intimidated – just get rid of perfectionism when you deal with consciousness. Why? because yesterday was yesterday and today you can always do better. There’s no end to improvement, and grades are just a result of life-long competition we were held in. But in our case, we don’t compete with anyone. This is personal, internal and private.For you tip-munching readers I say, don’t zombie-out in front of your favorite screen. When you find out a machine has overpowered you, pushed you into hibernate, get up, take a walk, talk to [real] people, eat something, do Yoga, whatever. Take smaller periods of continuous work, and when you do work, focus on your important goals, and always remember the first tip: keep a part of your attention to your self-awareness, your body, your 6th sense. When you wake up out of hibernation – take a small break. Remind yourself of what’s important.Acknowledge your abilities and your capabilities: “know thyself”, they said. When you know your limits, you can prevent damage. Zombies don’t know limits. They only know the one thing they’re locked on, until they end up banging their head against a wall. Can you be smarter than that?Endless amounts and types of information are thrown at us every minute through screens of different sizes and shapes. Are we lucky to be around and witness the revolution? Time will tell, I guess. But that’s reality – our biggest teacher. Facing the flood, a new skill must be acquired and improved: Knowing when to stop.Know when to say No.
[via http://yoavtaler.com/]
