Tech: Minds and Machines
Original published in the Globe and Mail. Read the full text here.
Two books offer different takes on how we should relate to tech
Technology advances furiously, but the human brain remains stubbornly human.
McGill neuroscientist and author Daniel J. Levitin writes that, "In 2011, Americans took in five times as much information every day as they did in 1986," but our internal hardware hasn't adapted to keep pace. The average home computer has enough data to fill 500,000 novels, and yet the brain's processing power is estimated at a meager 120 bits per second, hardly enough to parse two simultaneous conversations. In his new book, The Organized Mind: Thinking Straight in the Age of Information Overload, Levitin considers how we can use our limited mental capacity in an era of limitless information.
The book is a how-to manual and a mixed bag. There's lots of useful advice, but I'm not convinced that we can adapt to the 21st-century information economy – with its many demands and infinite distractions – as fully or easily as Levitin says we can. Some of his best ideas might be described as counterintuitive but useful. He argues that, instead of relying solely on electronic memory aids, you should invest in index cards, which are tactile and wonderfully modular – you can rearrange them as your priorities change. Other pieces of advice are obvious but well worth emphasizing. Levitin repeats one sobering fact: you are not a multitasker. Studies show that when you switch between, say, work, e-mail, Instagram and BuzzFeed, you decrease the cognitive resources needed for deep thought and decision-making. For high-level mental work, Levitin counsels, you must avoid digital distractions.
Another category of advice might be labeled "impractical but thought-provoking." Levitin says that when making tough medical decisions we should revert to dispassionate statistical reasoning, drawing on Bayesian probability analysis and the binomial theorem. He crunches the numbers on well-known hospital procedures such as prostate surgery and biopsies, concluding that, when the side effects are weighed against the benefits, these treatments aren't as good as they're made out to be. I find this claim unsettling, but I'm too innumerate to second-guess it. My helplessness reinforces Levitin's point: if we were better with stats, we could form autonomous opinions instead of depending on the noisy external world.
A final advice category encompasses ideas that are so straightforward they hardly warrant more than a sentence or two. Consider some of Levitin's suggestions on home organization (make the things you use often easiest to reach), filing (use nested categories), or productivity (try to sleep regularly). There's nothing wrong with simple, practical ideas, but Levitin sometimes strays into what critics Sally Satel and Scott O. Lilienfeld call "neuroredundancy": the tendency to bolster obvious points with neuroscientific explanations. I don't need a lesson in evolutionary psychology, for instance, to appreciate that arranging household items by category is a good thing to do.
Maybe it's unfair to criticize Levitin for lapses like these, since any 400-page book is bound to have at least a few flaws. But I'm not sure the book needed to be so long. For all of its braininess, The Organized Mind is a piece of service journalism, so I find myself wishing it were more serviceable – that is, shorter, crisper, and focused on game-changing insights. It could have exemplified the efficiency and practicality, which, for Levitin, are hallmarks of an organized life.
This is an excerpt. Read the full text here.