I recently finished reading a book recommended on Kevin DeYoung'sBest Books of 2010 list called Hamlet's Blackberry: A Practical Philosophy for Building a Good Life in the Digital Age by William Powers. DeYoung recommended it as the most convicting book he had read all year, so I "picked up" a copy and read through it. I don't know if I would use the word convicting, but it certainly was a thought-provoking book. You already read one of the fruits of my thought being provoked,the reason why I never answer my phone. Really, if I could sum up the whole book, it's the idea that we don't allow time for our thoughts to be provoked any more. We are trapped in "the crowd" with no easy way out.Powers separates his book into three sections; What Larks? The Conundrum of the Connected Life, Beyond the Crowd Teachings of Seven Philosophers of Screens, and In Search of Depth Ideas in Practice. The middle section is his focus, where he takes the teachings and musings of seven "philosophers" like Plato and Shakespeare and discusses how the issues they were having with being connected relate to our world today and how their solutions might help us. To be honest, I thought this section was the weakest of the three sections of the book. Plato and Thoreau were really the best chapters, but the rest I could have skipped and still gotten a lot out of the book.
Powers really shines in the opening section (the first four chapters), and really that section alone is worth the price of the book. If nothing else, it helps you to understand what being constantly connected is doing to you. There is another book I'm just starting that promises to go into this in more scientific detail, but Powers doesn't need scientific detail because we can all see ourselves as he talks about the issues. Boiling it down, since we are constantly connected, we flit from info to info. Think about it, how many windows to you have open on your computer right now? How about tabs? Have you ever surfed Facebook, but then the computer dings to tell you you've got email, and there is a link to a blog post you click, so you start reading the post, but off to the side there is something really intriguing, so you click there, but just as you start reading, the phone rings and your spouse asks what time the store closes, so you Google the store to find the store hours, then you click back on Facebook and update your status to reflect how grateful you are that your spouse is running to the store, and then a chat window pops up and you start chatting with that friend you haven't talked to in forever..... Sound familiar? What Powers suggests is missing are moments to process.
So, the last section of the book talks about ways that we might find those moments to process. One of the suggestions I liked was the "no screens" room. He suggested setting up a room without "screens" and deliberately spending time in that room. Now, I would change that slightly to allow my nook or Kindle, but that's because I don't have either of them set up for things like email and internet browsing would be horribly slow, and because I don't buy physical books any more and haven't for the last two or three years. Anyway, just the idea of disconnecting and "getting away" occasionally is valuable. Take time to ponder.
Now let me quickly go away from the book and draw a conclusion based upon the material. The subject I want to mention really quick is Bible study. After I read Hamlet's Blackberry, I was pondering how this applied to my spiritual walk and I suddenly realized just how counter to the way I process information Bible devotionals really are. Let me explain. I read a lot of books. A lot! As in, more than one a week. I also read lots of blogs. I use Google Reader and Flipboard on my iPad (which is synced with Google Reader) to keep up with all of those blogs. I keep up on Drudgereport daily and read lots of emails throughout the day. What I don't do is repeat a lot of content. My reading of Hamlet's Blackberry will likely be the only reading of Hamlet's Blackberry. I don't typically reread a lot of blog posts. In other words, my intake of content is constantly new. Bible study is quite the opposite. Instead we are called to pour over and reread the same text as we ask the Holy Spirit to write it on our hearts. This means reading the same material over again. This means pondering slowly through passages of scripture. This means training myself to slow down as I read the Bible. Anyway, just a thought.
Depending on how well you know me, or if you have ever tried to get a hold of me, you will have quickly realized that calling me is pretty much useless, but if you send me an email, you will usually get a response in a decent amount of time. I've never really thought about why I'm like this, but I'm reading a book called, "Hamlet's Blackberry: A Practical Philosophy for Building a Good Life in the Digital World," and I realize that it's my attempt to get some space. Picture in your head a friend who has a Bluetooth device hooked up to their phone. Have you ever noticed that people with them tend to talk on them a lot and have difficulty not answering the phone, even if they are involved in a real live conversation.
