Digital , Social Media , Creativity Jan 10, 2012
Can switching off keep you on your game?
As our world becomes ever more connected via the web, Facebook, Twitter and a host of other networking options some are suggesting the best way to live with the mounting cache of information growing all around us is to disconnect.
A New Year’s Resolution recommendation from San Francisco based artist Ivan Cash is to take a Facebook sabbatical, a project inspired by Pico Iyer’s essay “The Joy of Quiet” in which, among other things, he sees the future of travel “lies in ‘black hole resorts,’ which charge high prices precisely because you can’t get online in their rooms.”
Volkswagen has already created virtual black holes for some of its employees. In a recent New York Times article, Roger Cohen describes how the German automaker and other companies are dealing with the “modern curse” of ITSO (Inability to switch off).
But Facebook sabbaticals and respites from email may be more valuable than simply a means to combat burnout, as important as that is. Unplugging may, in fact, lead to discovery. Writing in the latest issue of Intelligent Life, writer Ian Leslie makes the case for serendipity, the kind of serendipity that led to the invention of the microwave oven and the discovery of penicillin. (The article is only available in the print edition or iPad app version.)
“…innovation thrives on the serendipitous collision of ideas,” writes Leslie. “If you are searching for something, you can find it online, and quickly. But a side-effect of this awesome efficiency may be a shrinking, rather than an expansion, of our horizons, because we are less likely to come across things we are not in quest of.” Leslie argues that serendipity is something we can’t just leave to chance.
On the flip side, writer Steven Johnson outlines a path of his online research that he describes as serendipity. Intriguing as his journey is, I’m not sure I’d call it that, at least not in the original meaning of the word as coined by Horace Walpole in 1754. Writing to a friend, Walpole relayed a Persian fairy tale in which the three Princes of Serendip were “always making discoveries, by accidents and sagacity, of things which they were not in quest of.”
Today’s world wide web is amazingly good at organizing and making available the exponential increase in information. But as Pablo Picasso said, “Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.”
Some conditions are more conducive to accidental discovery than others and you may find new inspiration by switching off and taking a route less travelled.
Lyle TurnerWriter/Producer
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