No Time to Think

Google Tech Talks
March, 5 2008

ABSTRACT

Vannevar Bush's 1945 article, "As We May Think," has been much celebrated as a central inspiration for the development of hypertext and the World Wide Web. Less attention, however, has been paid to Bush's motivation for imagining a new generation of information technologies; it was his hope that more powerful tools, by automating the routine aspects of information processing, would leave researchers and other professionals more time for creative thought. But now, more than sixty years later, it seems clear that the opposite has happened, that the use of the new technologies has contributed to an accelerated mode of working and living that leaves us less to think, not more. In this talk I will explore how this state of affairs has come about and what we can do about it.

Speaker: David M. Levy
David Levy earned a Ph.D. in Computer Science at Stanford University in 1979 and a Diploma in Calligraphy and Bookbinding from the Roehampton Institute (London) in 1983. For more than fifteen years he was a researcher at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC), where his work, described in "Scrolling Forward: Making Sense of Documents in the Digital Age" (Arcade, 2001), centered on exploring the transition from paper and print to digital. During the year 2005-2006, he was the holder of the Papamarkou Chair in Education and Technology at the Library of Congress. A professor at the UW Information School since 2000-2001, he has been investigating how to restore contemplative balance to a world marked by information overload, fragmented attention, extreme busyness, and the acceleration of everyday life.

• Category

  People & Blogs

[particulateman]

What if, the entire "problem" of information overload is not "work load" but rather our current wealth.

Today, we can choose to buy what was never available to individuals before. Two hundred years ago a successful person might need to labor or study for 14-16 hours a day to attain a life we would now consider poor.

Today, it's possible to be relatively successful with very little effort. We can use this spare time any way we wish, but most choose to remain "busy" rather than still.

[johnsharer]

I first met Dr. Levy in 1970, when we were suitemates at our undergraduate college. Dr. Levy is one of the most thoughtful and profund thinkers I had ever met. From this talk, it is apparent that Dr. Levy still amply deserves that distinction.

[Tony Stark]

like my father many scientists and thinkers were limited by the technology of their time 

[FatherElectric]

When I first saw the length of the video, I wished it were less than 7 minutes. After I finished watching it, now I know why.

[badliferequiresvice]

some people don't have the opportunity or intellect to create situations where their wealth allows them to maintain this connection to current information. Or have circumstantial obstructions to it. Considering the average wage in Britain and the expected out goings of the average household leaves very little expendable income/time for stillness.

[badliferequiresvice]

some people choose to remain busy and very few people (at least in my experience) remain still. Stillness is still a luxury for most people. To remain connected to society and have the amenities that are required costs money, thus work or 'busyness' is required.

The social environment has changed significantly.

To gain information required for useful thinking in 'stillness' requires connectivity to information. To gain that in this society you need money and have to work for it.

[miningorb]

Nociceptive pain may also be divided into "visceral," "deep somatic" and "superficial somatic" pain. Visceral structures are highly sensitive to stretch, ischemia and inflammation, but relatively insensitive to other stimuli that normally evoke pain in other structures, such as burning and cutting. Visceral pain is diffuse, difficult to locate and often referred to a distant, usually superficial, structure. It may be accompanied by nausea and vomiting and may be painfull.

[I Vinay]

Friends search for Jiddu Krishnamurti on Youtube and give few min of your time to explore how brain depends so much on knowledge and limitation of knowledge

[Omnamah Shivaya]

But everyday is already 'Only listen if you choose to day'.