Skep-Tech: 10 Reasons Why I’m Moving Away From Being So Screen-centric & How I Hope to Do it

Skep-Tech: 10 Reasons Why I’m Moving Away From Being So Screen-centric & How I Hope to Do it

April 5th, 2010 // 4:02 pm @ Leif Hansen

The Skinny
If you’re used to hearing from me frequently via email or other social media platforms (Twitter, Facebook, Biznik, etc.), you won’t be hearing from me near as much in the next two weeks.  I’m excited & nervous to start a two week experiment (which may turn out to be more ongoing) of limiting my social technology use (and screen use in general) to one day a week.  After today, this Thur & next Wed will be my primary screen days. That will likely sound radical to some of you and ‘no big deal’ to others, but for me it’s what I need to start with.  If you’re curious to hear why, to see a list of my skep-tech concerns, or to learn my goals and plans, then read on…

Why My Inner Skep-Tech is Moving Away from Being So Screen-centric

1. I feel like I’ve traded depth of relationships for breadth of relationships.  Some good has come from this, but I’m doubtful its been worth the cost.
2. I’m finding it increasingly easy to escape from Real Life (what’s in front of me, who I’m with, my deeper needs, fears, responsibilities, work, relationships, etc.) by slipping into my iphone & laptop (and other screens).
3. My core values (like adventure, creativity, playfulness, spirituality, wonder, community, love, engaging life with one’s whole body/mind/spirit) are either extremely challenging to express or severely flattened when mediated by technology.
4. I’ve noticed that I breathe less regularly, feel less emotions (and aren’t feelings the juice of life?), and am far less creative (in an originating/ideation sense) when staring at screens.
5. I’ve noticed myself increasingly peeking, sneaking, checking my email, status, stats, etc. over the years… how many “Honey, I’m going to the bathroom”s does it take to admit that there is a def. technological dependency creeping up on me. I’d like to re-gain integrity with my words and deeds.
6. The only activity & exercise my body gets during these times is through my fingertips.  The consequences for spending 6-12 hrs a day like this are getting more severe.
7. Productivity-wise, for both my business & personal life, my hunch is that becoming so technology dependent has actually dramatically decreased productivity more than increased it.  For example, besides the many hours of distractions and multi-tasking, I am certain that a phone call would in most cases be more productive than bouncing 10 emails back and forth.  And increasing follow-up calls to potential clients would get me further than broadcasting my offers to thousands via social-media channels.
8. I’ve actually noticed some weird physical/health issues happening when I stare at screens these days
9. As I mentioned before, I just strongly believe that at the end of my life I will *not* wish I had spent *more* time in front of screens than engaging real life more fully.
10. I’m curious to see how it goes and if I can do it.

A Little Background
Those of you who have known me for more than a few months know that I have a somewhat laughable habit of vacillating between Tech Enthusiast & ‘Skep-Tech’ (as I like to call it.)  Well, despite (or perhaps because of) the fact that the eagerly anticipated iPad has just been released (and my belief that touch devices are about to flood the industrialized world) I’m now on one of my skep-tech swings.  For more detail on my past work & history in this area, see the last section of this post.

So, what brought this on?

Well, last Friday, the day before the anticipated iPad launch, I was taking a pensive walk down Port Townsend’s North beach.  I was thinking to myself “If I learned that I was going to die next week, would I be happy about spending so much of my life staring at these tiny windows on reality?”  The obvious answer, “no”. This line of thinking eventually led to my creating the list you read above of reasons I’m becoming increasingly skep-tech-al about spending 50-75% of my life sitting in front of screens.

Goals for this Experiment

1. To spend much less time using the Net (as this is the slippery slope), and much less time staring at screens in general.
2. To more fully use my body, senses, creative imagination; to more fully express my values during the day, as stated above.
3. To increase my engagement & enjoyment of real connections, even if just ‘downgrading’ to real-time phone conversations.
4. To face whatever voids (needs/responsibilities/etc.) that I tend to ‘a-void’, escape from, when screens are so readily accessible.
5. To come up with a longer-term sustainable technology use schedule/rhythm.
6. To share my experience with others, stimulate conversation around this topic, and to be true to my life mission of helping others to experience & live life as fully as possible.

My Current Plan

• Only use my computer on Thur this week (after setting things up today) and Wed next week.  This schedule is just for April 6-18th, so that I can step back enough to create a more sustainable schedule & rhythm for the future.  I’ve tried the ‘check your email 1-3x a day’ type ideas, and they don’t seem to work for me.
• If a project/client really requires my using a screen (a proposal sent; an e-product I’m working on, etc.) I will use it as the need arises and, when possible, will schedule the last 2 hours of each day for those projects.
• I’ll update FB/Twitter/etc. today with an extended explanatory link to this blog post
• I’ll create an email auto-responder with core contact details
• I’ll print out out in advance any necessary resources (calendar, projects, tasks, contacts, etc).
• Don’t be too religious about this…if something is necessary, it’s necessary.

My Past Work & Thinking on this Topic
Again, I’ve wrestled with & thought about this topic for quite some time.  My Thesis project, a fun and yet complex to describe adventure, looked at the effects of technology on relational creativity & culture.  You can read my original tech critique paper here (which used Tolkien’s mythic framework to compare and contrast two kinds of magic in that world to two kinds of ‘magic’ in our own) and the description of my actual thesis project “Quest for the Captive Child” here.  Though they are actually both quite interesting papers, and I’m really proud of the work I did, some of you will have to filter out my theological/philosophical viewpoints as, at the time, I was writing from a very specific spiritual worldview (one which I’ve moved on from quite a bit).

A few years after that I co-created the SoulTech workshops, with Jay Kimball of 8020Vision, which attempted to help people come into more congruency with their values & goals and how they used various technologies.  The workshops caught the attention of quite a bit of press, including the Today Show coming out and filming our 2nd workshop. The below gives a taste of the workshop, but with typical media hype and skew:

We also received press in a number of international papers, including the LA Times, and recently I was invited to speak on a panel for PBS Media Shift’s 5Across Show, here’s a clip from that show.

Lastly, I also put out a free ebook that gets that helps people think through many of the questions and ideas we talk about in the workshops (albeit in a much less fun, interactive, supportive way than the workshop).  You can find it, and more, on this page.

Category : Blog