Problem Practices | The Perfect Response

We are going to need some novel words in English to express the empty feeling of seeing our careful efforts depart for wherever pixels go to die.

Slate writer Julie Lee recently wrote a piece with the useful but troubling reminder that, in her words, “our digital lives are too fragile.” Like all of us, she has noticed that digital platforms are slippery. They constantly change and expect that we will adapt. Lee arrived at this conclusion after a free-access internet site that she used to save her work suddenly put up a full paywall. That meant that she would need to pay to have her pieces held in Evernote’s archive. Lee saw the implications, wondering if it was within her rights to retrieve her work using the site’s prior terms.

On a more prosaic level, I set up a new mobile phone several months ago, only to have it malfunction recently, requiring the service provider to force a complete restart, wiping it clean of all the apps, contacts, and settings I had arranged. These experiences are not unlike discovering that a frequently used organization has suddenly experienced a kind of brain freeze, with the surprising result that they can find no record of any prior contact. If log-ons fail, a person’s account may go into a limbo made worse because organizations typically reject any effort to set up a new account because “someone else” has your name. If we needed reminders—and we don’t—the capricious digital world can change the terms of service at any time.

We have extended ourselves into this electronic ether perhaps forgetting that organizations eventually want to monetize our use of them. The idea of paying for media access is hardly new. Our grandparents duly paid to receive a morning paper or the most recent issue of Time Magazine. But our implicit contract with a given platform is usually less stable. Platforms in the informational world often start with the tempting bait of free access, usually in exchange for exposure to a modest number of advertisements. But these same sources can easily devolve into a “pay to play” policy, as Lee found out. Even the vital news source of the Associated Press is now asking for donations to support their website, which remains pleasantly packed with accessible content. Will that change in the future if they move stories behind their own paywall?

Lee’s concerns extend further to creative work that we release into the world in outlets curated by others, and subject to terms of service that may include the withdrawal of access to material that we thought was ours. As digital journalists who have seen their companies vanish can tell us, nothing that enters our world using pixels is necessarily permanent. As I have noted in earlier essays, Apple software usually does not give users or other tech companies anything close to full access.

If the idea was not already with us, we would have had to invent the concept of a library that can function as a long-term repository for ideas and images. There is some comfort in knowing that a hardcopy book launched into the world will have a small chance at permanence on a bookshelf. Libraries eagerly purging their paper documents should think again.

Everybody is Now I.T. Person. And Most of Us Aren’t Very Good at it.

Those of us who live extensively in the digital realm can be impressively productive. But it is also the case that the amount of time we must take to simply maintain access can be excessive. My gloomy effort at phone recovery took a half day, not unlike the previous day’s similarly futile effort to convince Adobe that I should be able to make a minor change on a homegrown PDF file. It turns out that I needed to pay more for that basic editing privilege.

Notwithstanding the library model, perhaps we are evolving to a new norm of cultural impermanence, where most current content or personal data will be lost or unavailable. A.I. probably makes this shift more likely, where only the ill-fitting skeletons of borrowed tropes will be thrown into “new” messages to live another day.

Even so, we are going to need some new and novel words to express the empty feeling of seeing our careful efforts depart for wherever pixels go to die. For my part, in this new year I vow to not allow the digital demons to devour hours that could be used more productively.

Our multiple selves that we construct for others are mostly held together by desires to assert identities that will cast a shadow. We want to be presence: someone who is more cause than effect.

When someone wonders ‘what is the most common deficiency most of us show in our interactions with others?’ a firm response easily comes to mind: we are mostly bad and inattentive listeners. This is mostly because the mantra of our age is to first take care of ourselves. It may be good for our overall mental health to put our interests forward, but it means that there can be no surprise that our interactions often miss what another is saying. Most of us display a common desire to bring conversations back our agenda.

This is an age when standing out can have its own rewards; we routinely honor people who make an impression in the kind of fluency they admire. Our media is populated with these figures. For example, popular journalism feeds on the “interesting” guest. And as more research is confirming, social media often function the same way, offering constructed displays of ostensibly enviable lives. It follows that our own efforts to respond to our judgment that our presence needs to be repaired are motivated to perform a self that will cast a shadow. We want to be presence; someone who is more cause than effect; the one who is the source of attention rather than the one who attends to others.

Our cameras were once used to capture the images of others. Now they are often turned around to create ‘selfies’ that we can pass along the digital food chain.

This summary is too simple, but it suggests that what passes as discourse between equals can best be understood as ‘taking turns.’ The preoccupation of self that defines our age plays out in the simple desire to be at the center of typical exchange, preferencing our judgments and conclusions over interest in giving others space to lay out what are often extended narratives.

The impulse to be heard rather than to hear is unevenly spread across the culture. It seems strongest in adults, which is perhaps why so many young adults are impatient with offers of advice from older family members. The circles of influence for the young are smaller and tighter, leaving less of an appetite for giving time to parents who are ready to assert their authority and credibility. We’ve even turned this pattern into a Hollywood trope: films about the lives of teens rarely allow parents or teachers to be the pivotal influencers they hope to be. Think of Greta Gerwig’s film Ladybird (2017). A slight exaggeration perhaps, but mom and daughter are mostly on different planets. Screenplays like Ladybird typically write older figures as foils more than resources. They are written to be quick to react and to assert their prerogatives. My experience is that this is actually more common with American men than women; men rarely want to give the impression that they are supplicants instructed by another. But the basic pattern of talking past each other is familiar.

It’s not that we don’t listen to anyone anymore. Functionally, most of us spend large parts of every day in front of a screen that is asking for attention to spoken or written messages. But this is ‘listening’ at its lowest gradient: often little more than awareness without much comprehension. Peripheral attention to a figure in a video, for instance, is qualitatively a long way from the more active listening that is often needed to produce a conversation that can be enlightening or even transformative. Our excessive attention to packaged media requires only a passive kind of reception, setting us up to be frail listeners when circumstances demand so much more.

The next time you are in a gathering, practice your listening by turning down competing distractions. And focus on giving another your undivided attention. Active listening is work, but it is usually rewarding.

The Perfect Response

EFFECTIVE COMMUNICATION IN A DISTRACTED AGE

Category Archives: Problem Practices

The Impermanence of Our Best Efforts

The Desire to Cast a Shadow