Screens

Have you ever noticed how pervasive of a role “screens” now play in our everyday lives? I saw a news story the other day about a company that was expanding to make a new type of screen that was light-weight and virtually indestructible. This got me to thinking about how I spend much of my life in front of screens of some form or fashion (for example, both of us are at this very moment looking at a screen; me as I type this and you as you read it). As we spend increasing amounts of time in front of screens, I guess it will be comforting to know that these new screens will be able to take quite the beating. However, I worry that we are the ones taking the beating, but more on that later. I have to set the context first.

Let’s look at an average day in my life and how much I interface with a screen of some sort or fashion. My first exposure to a screen most days is a groggy eyed stare at a neon green alarm clock screen that bellows at me that it is time for the challenge of a new day. The next exposure to a screen follows an uncertain pattern but typically involves either using my computer screen to make sure I haven’t shown up on Topix overnight or my i phone to see what kind of day I can expect to have based on the Facebook musings from my friends and family. (On a side note, I’ve noticed that there are a handful of my Facebook friends who seem to be a bellwether of sorts for the type of day I will have. If they are chipper and posting affirmative thoughts, I tend to be pretty optimistic about my day. If they are bemoaning life and ranting, I am tempted to just call in sick and go back to bed). If I am particularly inquisitive, I may even peruse the news and weather again via one of these screens. Thanks to Kentucky legislators who had the foresight and wisdom to make texting and surfing the internet while driving illegal, I am largely screen free on my drive into work, although I do pass a number of establishments that have screens competing to tell me the current time and temperature.

Once I get to work, other than direct time spent with patients, I spend a large part of my day at work looking at screens. I start off most days checking my email and voice mail messages both of which are done via screens. I fill out my time sheet and sign off on the time sheets of my staff via a screen that interfaces with our payroll system. Administrative reports are completed via a screen interface with Word or Excel. I schedule my own appointments via a screen interface with our practice management software. Now, thanks to a grant I wrote on yet another screen, even my assessments and therapy notes are entered into a state of the art electronic medical record by way of (you guessed it) a screen interface. It used to be that meetings and trainings were screen free zones but now even these once safe refuges are being taken over by screens. Most meetings and trainings now use a screen for the obligatory PowerPoint presentation or the ever present whiteboard so that we don’t miss any bit or minutiae or bullet point that should be captured for the sake of prosperity.

The lunch hour, which is supposed to offer us that much needed mid-day respite, even requires us to navigate screens. Almost any drive-thru establishment now requires you to check and verify your order on the screen. If you choose to take a more casual lunch and frequent a sit-down restaurant, you still have confront a screen of some sort when you check out or pay your bill (except for Delite’s in Maysville, KY where they still calculate the cost of your meal by pencil and paper and you pay a different amount each time even if you order the same thing every time).

After putting in an afternoon at work navigating more screens, I head back home for more leisurely pursuits. But again there are multiple screens to navigate. In order to prepare a meal, I have to navigate screens of the oven or microwave. Screens also compete for my attention after dinner in the form of television, Xbox 360, Netflix, computer games, the World Wide Web, and my i-phone. The success of the i-phone and similar screen or touch based interface hand held devices have even given us the power to hold screens in our hands so that we can take them wherever we go (provided we have 3G or Wi-Fi coverage).

Even my dreams are not safe from screens. I have two recurring dreams, one of which actually involves screens; the other involves high school and would not at all help me make any useful point in this essay. Many articles on the internet will have certain words or phrases hyper linked so that if you click on the word or phrase, you will be taken to a web page providing additional information on that word or phrase. My recurring screen dream involves somehow becoming trapped in the World Wide Web by clicking on a hyperlink which only leads me to other web pages from which I am unable to click myself free. I try link after link in an effort to get out, only to further entangle myself into the web.

I was even saddened by my recent trips to the Cincinnati Reds and Lexington Legends baseball games. I found my attention frequently being drawn to a massive screen which alternated between the box score, statistics, trivia, replays, the kiss cam, and animated races (always bet on number 2 or the female in these races). It was certainly a marvel of technology, but it seemed like some people weren’t even aware that there was a game going on the field.

One of my greatest joys as a child was looking up things in encyclopedias. I started with a Charlie Brown set and moved up to Funk and Wagnall’s after a door to door salesman convinced my parents that mine and my brother’s prospects for life were linked to us having a set of encyclopedia to consult at a moments notice. While I never took on a task so Herculean as that of AJ Jacobs in his quest to read the entire Encyclopedia from A to Z, there was something cool about holding the fake leather bound, gold engraved book in my hands and exploring uncharted knowledge. It is just not the same experience holding your i-phone in your hand or trying to hold the flat screen monitor as a book only to discover that the Wikipedia article you have been reading for the last ten minutes cites Access Hollywood as its main source.

Given the ubiquitous nature of screens in our lives, I think we have to ask ourselves what effects does exposure to screens and their related content have on us. The majority of the screens we are exposed to on a daily based are media rich in content. While it is amazing to have such content at our fingertips and to have answers to almost any question just moments away, at times I feel overwhelmed by such access. In addition to a fear that I am ruining my eyes from looking at screens so much, I also fear that looking at screens so much may actually change the way we think and problem-solve. I’d go see an eye doctor or my family doctor about these concerns, but I’m pretty sure they would ask me to sit down in front of a screen for some sort of “screening” exam.

In fact, according to the Wall Street Journal, my fear has a name. More people are showing up at eye appointments complaining of headaches, fatigue, blurred vision and neck pain—all symptoms of computer-vision syndrome (CVS), which affects some 90% of the people who spent three hours or more at day at a computer, according to the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Healthy.

As far as how all these screens may be changing the way we think, I humbly submit the following:

These screens seem to cause many of us to confuse increased access to information as being indicative of increased knowledge. The media rich content of our many screens puts a deafening amount of information at our fingertips, but I’m not sure it actually increases our knowledge all that much. Knowledge is more about how to interpret, make sense of, and use information than accumulating more and more bits of information.

I also think that the easy access to information via our screens is making us more impatient. With our often instant access to news, weather, and sports it is often difficult for us to wait for similar information via more traditional means. How hard is it for traditional newspapers to compete for readers when their content is out of date the moment it is printed? Why wait up for the 11 o’clock news to see if the Reds won when I can have pitch by pitch results sent directly to my phone?

The media rich content of our screens also seems to be having an effect on our attention span. The media content of our screens seems more and more structured to give a quick overview and highlights of whatever topic we are exploring. News aggregators and sites consolidate all the information we might be interested into short synopses of the larger story. I’m going to save the content of game screens for another day, because I certainly think these screens are having a big impact on our kids as well.

With easy access to information via all these screens, it seems that many students today seem to take a “it’s in the public domain” approach to information. Books, music, videos can all be downloaded or viewed without purchasing the actual book, CD, or DVD. There also seems to be little awareness or concern about the concept of plagiarism. I occasionally teach undergraduate classes and I never ceased to be amazed how naive some students are when they copy and paste huge amounts of information or texts from copies of books or information they find on the internet. I even had a student recently list Google as one of her references.

See the following article for a more thorough and reasoned analysis of these types of concerns.

If you are feeling adventurous, I have hyper linked some of the words and phrases in this article to additional information. Be careful, like my recurring dream you could get stuck in the World Wide Web. Do you feel lucky?

Written by Jeff Drury August 2010