Dealing with Digital Distractions 

A catastrophic event unfolds. A seemingly healthy professional embarks on his daily commute, only to come to the frightening realization that his battered and beloved BlackBerry lies vulnerable and unused in a distant corner of his home. An unwholesome panic descends. No matter how far away from home he is, and no matter how needless the device may be in a practical sense, he is impelled to hightail it back to his house and reconnect with the world.

This familiar scenario, according to a review by David Harsanyi, is told by author William Powers in the book “Hamlet’s BlackBerry,” reviewed in July in The Wall Street Journal.

The syndicated columnist argues that the distractions of manic connectivity often lead to a lack of productivity and, if allowed to permeate too deeply, to an assault on the beauty and meaning of everyday life.

Harsanyi says that even a jaded reader is likely to be won over by the book, which argues that society has ceded too much of its existence to the digital world.

To accept “Hamlet’s BlackBerry” is to accept that we are super busy, Harsanyi writes. “It’s staggering,” writes Powers, “how many balls we keep in the air each day and how few we drop. We’re so busy, sometimes it seems as though busyness itself is the point.”

Though Harsanyi says he doesn’t find all that ball-juggling as staggering as the author, and doesn’t know anyone who acts as if chaos is the point of it all, “it would be foolish not to concede that our lives have become far more complex than ever before,” the reviewer declares.

What can be done? What should be done? Powers’s answer is, in essence: Just say no. Try to cultivate a quieter or at least more-focused life, according to Harsanyi. He suggests that family spend more time face-to-face instead of Facebooking.

Powers proposes that citizens take into account the “need to connect outward, as well as the opposite need for time and space apart.” It is a powerful desire, the balanced life, according to Harsanyi. “I’m not sure that many of us have found that spacious place where our minds can wander free of technological intrusions, of beeps and buttons and e-mails and tweets,” he writes, “but ‘Hamlet’s BlackBerry’ makes the case that we can—or should—find it.” Recently, while watching some hypnotically dreadful movie, Harsanyi says he instinctively reached for his BlackBerry to fetch some worthless biographical information about a third-rate actress that would do no more than clog his brain still further.

“Then I remembered something Powers wrote about what was spoken to his character Hamlet by his latest technological communications gadget,” Harsanyi writes. “Don’t worry, you don’t have to know everything, just the few things that matter.”

The Wall Street Journal, Bookshelf, July 1

Was this article helpful to you?

Current Rating	0%