Unintended Consequences and Continuous Partial Attention

Our state legislature here in California, in their infinite wisdom, recently enacted a law that makes it a crime to talk on a cell phone if you hold the phone in your hand, but not if you use some kind of hands-free device, like a bluetooth headset. This despite the fact that virtually every study on the subject came to the conclusion that it doesn't make you any safer to drive hands-free on the phone compared to holding the phone to your ear.

Politicians are never ones to let silly things like facts get in the way of passing legislation that attempts to modify the behavior of millions of people, so we are now dealing with the unintended consequences of their action. The first of which I noticed while in line at the Home Depot the other day. I was just about the only customer in the three lines around me that did not have a bluetooth device sticking out of his/her ear. Obviously people either forget that it's in there, or it's too inconvenient to remove and replace it every time you get in your car. I used to see this every once in a while, but now just about everyone I see looks like an extra from the latest Star Trek movie, blue light pulsing mysteriously in their ear as they communicate with their Romulan Overlord.

I am going to perform a public service right here on the virtual pages of Digital Edu for those of you who do not have a loved one who cares enough about you to tell you the unvarnished truth about your appearance. Ready? Here it is. If you walk around with one of those thingees sticking out of your ear, you look stupid. Really, really stupid. And it doesn't change that fact just because everyone around you has one also. The Borg may be taking over, but it can't make you look cool. Another more pleasant unintended consequence is that since I refuse to wear one, for the first time in my life, I'm the least geeky looking guy in the room. No small feat, that.

It also makes me wonder - when did we get to the point when we feel like we must be in constant communication with everyone else, at all times, and under any circumstances? When did it become a travesty to allow a phone call to go to voicemail? At work I rarely pick up my phone if I'm in the middle of something because I don't think the person calling me gets to decide what my highest priority is at that particular second. I can always call them back (or not). My family knows that if it's an emergency just immediately call back and I'll be sure and pick up.

One of the unintended consequences of this wonderful mobile communication technology is that we rarely have time any more when we are not plugged in to the ever increasing (and demanding) communication grid. At what point does the technology stop serving us and start ruling us? If we have a Pavlovian response to a ringing noise and stop whatever we are doing to answer the call, or return the text message, or reply to an IM, or pick up that email, do we really control our time? If we don't control our time, do we control ourselves?

I joke about it, but it is actually a serious problem that is starting to receive attention. Some are calling it "Continuous Partial Attention" or CPA. It describes that state we are in when we are continously interrupted to respond to an incoming message that demands our immediate attention. A recent study estimates it costs the US economy $650 billion dollars a year. An article in New Scientist magazine stated that overexposure to information lowers a person's IQ score in a manner similar to smoking marijuana.

So what do we do about it? Simple - unplug every once in a while. The world will continue to rotate on its axis if you don't answer that email right away. The person calling you to chat will still be your friend if you don't pick up. The text messages can wait. Unplug, relax and maybe even spend some time thinking and reflecting rather than constantly being on the hunt for new information.

Oh yeah, and also take that thing out of your ear. You look stupid.

New Virtual Spaces

My apologies to both of my faithful readers of DigitalEdu for the long absence in blogging. Life just gets real busy at times, and something has to get tossed overboard. For me, it was blogging, but I'm hoping to get back into more regular postings. There is certainly plenty to blog about.

I've been following SecondLife for a couple of years now, and have been intrigued by the potential of a virtual world. Today I ran across two new virtual environments, both of which can be accessed from within your web browser. They do require that you install a plug-in, but that's easier than a complete program installation like SecondLife.

The first is called Vivaty and allows you to post items like pictures and YouTube videos in a virtual space. It appears on your Facebook page and your friends can dive into the virtual world to enjoy your information in a 3-D environment - as long as they are using IE on Windows, anyway. The second environment looks really promising, if for no other reason than it is from Google - my all time favorite software company. It's called Lively and it at least supports Firefox, but is also currently limited to Windows.

If you go to check them out, I suspect your first reaction might be a bit dissapointing. They seem rudimentary, the avatars look cartoonish, and the motion is a bit jerky. When I see something like this, I think back to the first time I used a web browser - Mosaic 1.0. There were very few web sites, they all had gray backgrounds with left-justified text which couldn't even wrap around images, and worst of all, they didn't contain useful information. The web became powerful because lots of really smart people turned it into the most powerful communication mechanism in human history.

I suspect that years from now we will be enjoying our fully immersive 3-D virtual worlds and we'll be looking back at these first steps with the same kind of wistful memory I have of Mosaic. All they need are some really smart people with the imagination and drive to make them into powerful and useful tools. Are you one of those people?

Geek Report

I have been doing in-service presentations for the faculty at our two colleges for many years, and it has evolved into something called the Geek Report. I try to highlight technology trends that might be helpful to them, whether in their personal lives (such as GTD), or things that could help them in teaching (such as Second Life). Tom Weisrock, who does a fantastic job organizing the in-service week at Saddleback College, produced this graphic to advertise my session in the fall. I don't know what this says about me (or about how much free time Tom has), but I got a chuckle out of it. You can click on it to view Tom's handiwork in full detail.

It Takes a College

Yesterday I spoke at our state student services conference in LA - "It Takes a College" - and did my iPod Generation speech. It was my first general session so it was a bit nerve-wracking facing such a large audience. I was the only thing standing between them and lunch so I was motivated to keep it lively. No one fell asleep (that I could see), so I think it went OK. Once again, it was a great crowd and I really appreciated the opportunity. It's a topic I really believe in and I hope I started some conversations that will continue on their campuses.

Two young ladies in a graduate program at UCLA spoke with me afterwards and posed a very interesting question regarding liability. If we start interfacing our systems with sites like Facebook or MySpace (which I think is a great idea), how do we ensure our institutions don't become liable for that content? If those students have items on their sites that are unseemly right next to information from our colleges, will that create an association in people's minds that will be unfavorable?

When the producer/consumer model of information is upended, it raises questions that don't necessarily have easy answers. We could just avoid it entirely and stick with our static (AKA boring) web sites that don't really serve students, but that certainly isn't appealing. We are at the beginning stages of an entirely new era of communication and the rules and policies haven't caught up yet.

Life 40 Years From Now

Kurt Dowdle tipped me off to this fascinating article from Mechanics Illustrated magazine in 1968. It predicts what life will be like in 40 years. Read it and see if it accurately describes what your life is like now. This should give anyone pause who is making predictions today on how technology is going to alter our lives in the future.

Information Revolution

Another great video from Mike Wesch of Kansas State University. This one is on the nature of information in a digital age. Enjoy!

Artificial Intelligence in Second Life

There is a very interesting article about an avatar in Second Life that is not controlled by a human, but by software (thanks to Ted Leath for sending it to me). As the article points out, the future possibilities for this kind of system are endless - I think particularly in education.

Keep an Eye on This

Robert Scoble is a technology blogger who I read on a regular basis. He wrote a post about some new technology that Microsoft previewed recently that actually made him cry. It's called World Wide Telescope and it sounds very exciting. It appears to be similar to Google Earth Sky View, but sounds like it is even better. This could be a great tool for teaching science and astronomy classes, and hopefully they'll make it available to the public soon. You can read more about it on their web site.

Expressing Ideas Through Images

Christian Long, on his think:lab blog, directed me to see an amazing set of images produced by a photographer/artist named Chris Jordan. He transforms statistics into stunning images that are both beautiful and disturbing at the same time. He makes some fairly powerful statements about our consumer culture.

Check out Christian's article and then be sure and click on the link to the images themselves. It's worth your time.

ACCCA Conference

Today I spoke at the ACCCA conference on the iPod Generation. My energy level was pretty low since I just got back from Mexico yesterday (see post below), but it was a very engaged audience so I got motivated pretty quickly and we had a great conversation. There were some really good questions and one person talked about how in her classes she has her students listen to her lectures prior to her class and then she uses all the class time for interactive activities. What an awesome idea! (If you are that person, please email me because I would love to ask you some more questions).

Mexico 2008

Yesterday I returned from our youth group's annual house building trip to Mexico. I have written on this topic the last few years, so I won't go into all of the details (in the hopes that you will search the archives and read more). This year it was even more special because my son is now in high school so I had both my kids with me for the first time.

As in the past, it was an amazing and inspiring experience. I can't adequately describe how fulfilling it is to see young people so committed to changing the lives of people they have never met, and will never see again. They experienced 6 days of camping with no hot water, electricity, flush toilets or showers and experienced frigid temperatures at night. On top of that, they had to rise shortly after dawn, and work until dark to build a house in 4 days using only hand tools.

What an amazing group of young people! I'm honored to be associated with them.

India

I returned two weeks ago from one of the most fascinating places I have ever visited. I spent a week in India along with three people from Neudesic - the company we are partnering with to create our new student system. Neudesic has an India branch and they are going to start developing parts of our new system. I was asked to join a team going there to bring the India team up to speed on the project. I jumped at the chance and it was a fascinating week.

India is such a study in contrasts. It has an intriguing mix of cultures - Hindu and Muslim, poor and rich, eastern and western. We drove every day from our nice hotel to a brand new office building, yet in-between we saw temporary shacks housing construction workers and cows wandering the streets. We spent most of our time in Hyderabad where the Neudesic India office is located, and it is a city that is rapidly growing. There was a high level of energy and everyone seemed to be on the move. Words cannot adequately describe the traffic and what it's like to ride in it. We had a local driver because driving in India is not for the faint of heart!

In the picture you can see the Neudesic India/SOCCCD team. I was really impressed with them and I look forward to seeing them contribute high quality work to our project.

Lifehacker on Jott

Yesterday in my faculty in-service sessions I demonstrated a great service called Jott. Lifehacker has an article today that provides a really nice overview of Jott.

I discovered by reading this article, and checking the Jott web site, that this service uses a combination of software and humans to transcribe voice messages into text. I didn't know that any human intervention was involved. It does explain how amazingly accurate it is, but also makes me think back to some of the messages I have sent myself while testing it. Oops! I think I'll be a little more careful from now on. It is possible to set your account settings so no humans are involved. I may try that and see if the performance or accuracy changes.

In any case, it's a great service and I use it all the time when I think of something I need to remember and I'm not in a place where I can record it in my to-do list.

Using Technology to Get Things Done

Today I'm doing a faculty in-service at each of our colleges on the Getting Things Done (GTD) productivity system by David Allen. I'm going to talk a little bit about the GTD principles and then demonstrate some technology tools that can be use to get yourself more organized and keep email from dominating your life. Links to all of the systems I mention are in the right column on this blog under "GTD Links".

A Great Deal

Everything I know about the Internet, I must now admit, is due to Gabe and Max. Enjoy.

It's a Wonderful Internet

Check out this clever site that illustrates how much life has changed with the Internet:

http://www.itsawonderfulinternet.com

CCCSFAAA Conference

I spoke today at the CCCSFAAA Conference in San Francisco on the topic of Multi-Generational Learning. It was a great audience - very attentive, interested and engaged. If you are reading this blog because you were there and I (once again) shamelessly plugged it to artificially inflate my pathetic hit count - welcome! The links I mentioned are in the right column under the header "iPod Generation Links". You can find an older version of my slides by clicking on "Recent Presentations" in the "Other Links" section. I'll post my latest set of slides soon.

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Ralph Gaston

I’m an orphan now. My Dad passed away on November 8th. It was not entirely unexpected - he was 84 and in declining health, but it was, and still is, a major blow to me. I’ve wanted to write about him for over a week, but am only now able to do so.

My Dad never did anything to make himself famous. He didn’t run for public office or break any world records or record music or act in movies. He was a pharmaceutical salesman. He was as solid as a rock. He worked for the same company for over 30 years, lived in the house I grew up in for 34 years and was married to my Mom for 51 years until her death in January 2002. He was a World War II veteran. He loved to hike and backpack and fish in the Sierras. He had a jeep that he used to take us on adventures out in the desert. He had a great sense of humor and loved to laugh and to make others laugh.

My Dad loved the holidays – Christmas most of all. Our house was always the most decorated one on the street with a life size nativity scene and Santa and elves off to the side. All of them lit up by floodlights. He loved “A Christmas Carol” and when my brothers and I were little we would turn out all the lights in the house except the ones on the Christmas tree. We would lay on the floor and fall asleep to his deep voice reading us that classic tale.

My Dad was a family man. We never once doubted that we were the most important part of his life. He would be the first to tell you his greatest accomplishment was raising his four boys. We were his life and his career never came before us.

I remember my Dad as a somewhat stoic Mid-Westerner - he wasn’t one to wear his emotions on his sleeve. I saw a deeper side of him later in life as we grew closer and as he came to need us for help and assistance, but it turns out that he was a far more emotional man than I ever knew. My brother Mike was going through some boxes to find pictures for his memorial service and came across a small notebook labeled “Tender Moments”. Today we would call it a journal. My Dad recorded times in his life that were particularly poignant, virtually all of them having to do with my brothers and me. It turns out that my Dad was a man of deep emotion and some of his writings border on poetry. It was a wonderful gift to find and it’s difficult to read without getting choked up.

My brother Mike read one of the notations at my Dad’s memorial service. It noted that my Mom asked my two older brothers what they would remember about their Dad if he died. Steve responded quickly, “Well, that he loved us”. My Dad wrote the following over 40 years ago, “How else could I possibly ask to be remembered by my sons”.

Rest in peace, Dad. It is exactly how we remember you.

Modern Education

Another great video that presents the challenges facing us in education - and done in a very compelling style. Enjoy.