Book review: The End of Absence

Or, Why I Keep Refusing to Get a Smartphone;You Can Pry My Flip Phone Out of My Cold, Dead Hands. [1]

This book has immediately gone on my evangelization list, along with The Spirit Catches You and How We Die. 

Michael Harris takes a critical, but not reactionary, look at our use of and relationship with technology, from the Internet and big-brother Google to the countless games of Angry Birds we play on our iPhones [1.5]. End is critical in that it makes us to look more closely at how often we use the tech for a quick fix - we're bored, so we play a game. We're lonely, so we use a relationship app. We're anxious, so we post a pic or a status or a tweet and get some likes [2]. 

And even I, who, per that slightly-though-not-entirely snarky post subtitle, does not have a app-capable mobile device, have been brought up against the sobering thought of my tech dependence. I've tried to confront it in the past, by not allowing myself to change my FB profile picture more than once a month (always looking for those likes!), or cutting tumblr out of my online diet (so. many. fandoms. and. feels.). But after reading this book, I realize how I start my day with checking email. How I carry my (flip, it's true) phone around and wait for a text, any text, while walking. How often I derp around on the internet in the evenings, with no purpose other than "bored now." [2.5] End has encouraged me to try again, has brought to my attention in greater detail what I've scarified by choosing more and more frequently the easy, tech-filled way.

But End is not a polemic. Harris recognizes the benefits technology brings to our lives, and is not interested in taking a moral stance on, for example, how often you tweet or check in at Foursquare. He writes, "Technology is neither good nor evil. The most we can say about it is this: It has come." People want connection and communion, and tech can fill that need. We want to stay in touch with our loved ones, create art, feel validated and loved. Tech can be a tool to do all those things. All that we may want to consider, he writes, is how much we're "giving ourselves over to its care," and if we've truly thought about what we're trading for the big-data-driven, crowd-sourced embrace.

Harris makes an apt comparison between our desire for connection and stimulation being satisfied by the mobile online world, and our desire for sweets and fats being satisfied by fast food. He writes, "Online connections are…fast food and dire nourishment in one." Is McDonald's going to dismantle the world and turn us all into those chair-bound humans on Wall-E? No, of course not. Will the web of dating apps and status updates across social media platforms turn us all into dopamine-seeking addicts? Similarly, no. But both have the power to make us more miserable than happy, more depressed than fulfilled. And both will keep us coming back for more of that which caused the problem in the first place. Our diets, he says, now both physical and mental, must be managed and kept in check. 

Abrupt topic change!

Yuppie tulips in Chicago

Tech use worries him not from a moral standpoint - he's not claiming that the morals of the young have been utterly corrupted by their use of Snapchat - but from a perspective standpoint: the internet has changed our lives so quickly and completely that we may not be able to remember any benefits about life before - that we may not be and indeed, probably aren't, aware of what we've lost from our pre-app days [3]. He writes, "It's hard to remember what we loved about absence; we never ask for our deprivation back." 

Deprivation has extremely negative connotations. To be kept from that which will make us happy is not a desirable thing. The trick, as Harris notes, is that what will make us happy in the long run and what will make us happy right now are not always the same. The ping of a text or the swipe left (or is it right? I have no idea) on Tindr may make the pleasure-seeking part of our brain light up - but the deep satisfaction that comes from creating or learning or taking risks will be denied. 

Deprivation for its own sake is not a good thing. Nobody wants to live in the dark of Plato's cave when there's a whole bright, wide world out there. The pain of ignorance and unending loneliness are not to be prized. But as explicated beautifully in End, we may be throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Some solitude is good for the soul. Some time to process events rather than move on to the next fix of interesting or distraction is necessary. Some time to actually take part in our experiences rather than record them for some later date is to be desired. [3.5] Some absence, goes the old adage, makes the heart grow fonder [4]. 

As a dedicated introvert, I thoroughly agree with this: "[W]e aren’t lonely because we’re alone; we are lonely because we have failed in our solitude." [5] I find myself turning to Facebook for validation, find myself wanting to text somebody whenever I feel a twinge of anxiety, wanting distraction from boredom rather than thinking of productive (in both the "Protestant work-ethic" way and the "produce/create an tangible something" way) things to occupy my brain and hands. But the introversion, I think, makes itself known in that I remember what it was like, as does Harris, before I was a worried, anxiety-ridden adult, and before I had a the ready means of banishing (or at least holding at bay) [6] my doubts and existential fears. A time before I needed, or thought I needed, or at least got used to, the Web of connection and validation - a time when I spend swaths of days alone and was just fine. 

Story time: I got a phone when I turned 16; my parents insisted. I had no data plan and no texts. My voicemail [6.5] message was the same all through high school and into college: "Hi, you've reached [redacted]'s voicemail. Leave me a message if you like, but I promise nothing. Have a great day!" I was in school seven to nine hours a day, doing homework for many more, and my parents had house phones. If any of my friends desperately needed to get a hold of me in the brief period of time I wasn't with them, they could call the house. I had no need or desire to be readily available outside of school. Wasn't all that time in class followed by the extra-curriculars enough?

And you know what? It was. I was busy. I had things to occupy my mind when I wasn't with my friends. I had readings to concentrate on and assignments to complete. And like Harris, I wonder about returning to this state. (Not the high-school life, no way, but the phoneless state; though my friends look at me like I'm a little crazy when I say it, I long for a house phone and no mobile.) He recounts a month-long experiment of cell phone- and internet-free living, learning to accept and be complete in his solitude. I'm not up for this, nor am I writing a book and need a quest for enlightenment to round out the narrative, but after reading End, I am up for re-learning to be satisfied with some solitude [7].

"What you use to interact with the world changes the way you see the world. Every lens is a tinted lens." Harris entreats us to use the lens of the internet with prudence. In the End, he advocates for living a tech life of intention, of recognizing our motives for using whatever app, and remembering that life exists off the internet as well as on it. 

And if all that wasn't enough to convince you to read this book, here are some other topics Harris explores and the connections I thought about [8]: 

End                                         Me

Cognition                              Saussurean language model

Affective computing           Whedon’s Dollhouse

Transactional memory      Easy A’s spell-check snark

Coursera                               The SO’s classes

Lifelogging                           Poetry’s ability to buffer us against self-revulsion

Walden                                 Dreams of being a hermit

Cloud computing                How many things go wrong in Sci-fi when we try to play God                   

xo, 
Devo

[1] The moment I get on the interwebs to start writing this, I'm distracted and bopping between windows - message the SO, bring up the book list, find hyperlinks, etc. The irony of writing this review on a blog is not lost on me.

[1.5] Or rather, everybody else's iPhones, because I am still stalwartly, somewhat crankily, holding off the advances and siren calls of the smartphone. As they say, it's much easier to just not have a thing than resist a thing. Think: chips, candy, season 6 of White Collar on Netflix...Side note, there's some book or article I can't call to mind right now (nor find via Google, and yes, I tried) that talked about how you can use up all your will-power just resisting looking at your phone during the workday. If there is only finite attention and will-power, I sure don't want to use it on a smartphone.

[2] I'm still trying to work out why internet is a proper noun and likes (as used on a social media platform) are often in quotes. These things, to me at least, seem to have migrated into the quotidian lexicon to an extent that they neither deserve capitalization nor does it need to be pointed out that it is a non-standard usage of the word. like in the social media sense is hardly an outlying definition. And since this is my blog and I'm free to press my views on you, internet will be lowercase and like will have no quote marks.

[2.5] Geek points to anybody who can name that reference. 

[3] Google, stop trying to harsh my generative-language mellow. I can use "pre-" as a prefix on any blasted word I want.

[3.5] "[The Internet and associated tech] don’t just enrich our experiences; they become our experiences."

[4] Somehow, Harris never used this phrase in his book - I wonder if this avoidance was intentional? 

[5] I really wanted him to be quoting Thoreau here, so I could make the "Thoreau-ly agree with" pun.

[6] And that's really the rub, isn't it? The tech is most often a band-aid rather than a cure.

[6.5] Google insists voicemail is two words. I think that's ridiculous.

[7] sssssss, alliteration ftw.

[8] Should anybody desire it, and make that desire known, I'd be willing to actually, y'know, write up one/some/all of these. Because despite having read, agreed with, and tried to take to heart the advice of End, I am still a child of the digital age and online feedback motivates me and makes me happy.