posted by Alison Wesley on August 31, 2010
I hope you're enjoying the recent discussion of technology and stress. Below is the second guest blog post written by one of Intel's social scientists. One of Intel's anthropologists, Ken Anderson, discusses the way that people use technology similarly to how babies use pacifiers. As I've mentioned in some of my previous blog posts, Intel has hired a series of brilliant minds to study how people use technology and how it can be used as a stress reliever. Stay tuned for more discussions from our social scientists to come in the following weeks.
For background on Intel's research on technology and stress, check out the blog post "Technology and Stress - The Good, Bad & Ugly."
To read the first post in this series of posts by Intel's social scientists, check out Margie Morris' guest post "Technology as Therapy."
Technology, the Adult Pacifier By Ken Anderson
I was running errands with my daughter, and now I've wound up in a coffee shop waiting for her to call me when she's done shopping for a friend. It's unclear whether she is going to be done in 10 minutes or three hours. I hadn't planned on being stranded in a coffee shop, but here I am; our plans are often interrupted or changed by other people, and we develop situated actions for coping.
I'm doing what a lot of people in the coffee shop are doing - drinking an Americano and hauling out my technology. I've read the New York Times on my phone, updated my Twitter feed, checked my e-mail, and of course taken a few notes on what people in the coffee house are doing (because I am an anthropologist and that is what we do). I feel at peace with my situation because I have what I call my "pacifier" with me, although others might simply call it "technology."
What I've experienced is something we've seen in our research with people around the world -"plastic time." Plastic time is the temporality of modern times; it is a temporality of uncertainty. We tend to get interrupted (ever had a spouse or kids ask you to do something while you were watching TV?), have to switch what we are doing to work around others (like my sitting here in this coffee shop now) or have to deal with time extensions (waiting extra long to see your doctor or to get your driver's license renewed). In short, time has some of the same characteristics of plastic.
Technologies are to Adults as Pacifiers are to Babies
We recently tracked 135 smart phone users over a 6 week period in the United States. Not surprisingly, people were using their phones more for Internet access than for calling. What was surprising to some was that about 25 percent of the time people were just checking their phones' screens and not looking at anything in particular. We learned from talking to participants that they were checking in on their world - their friends. A new behavior of lightly checking in on friends, afforded by the phone, had become habitual. The smart phone was not stressing them out; it was reassuring them. It was their "technological pacifier."
To understand how a smart phone is a pacifier requires an understanding of the shift in how we use our phones. Phones are now our containers for social relationships. Research participants described this to us in a number of ways. For example, a 30-something waitress held up her mobile in her right hand and authoritatively declared "This is my tribe." A 20-something financial investor talked about his phone as the "life support" to his social world. The habitual checking of the phone was repeatedly expressed as a means for people to know what was going on with their friends and family. Knowing we are connected and seeing what friends and family are doing puts people at ease.
Smart phones are not our only technology pacifier - PCs and tablets are too. In a similar study to the one tracking smart phones, we have also tracked notebook, netbook and MID use. In these cases the average time people are on these devices is under 4 minutes a session. People are opportunistically getting on these devices to check the state of their world, whether that is moves in a scrabble game, checking on flight plans for vacation or Facebooking. People are accessing these technologies from the time they get up in the morning until they fall asleep at night, sometimes even falling asleep with the devices. Sure, people are on for longer periods of time, but they are drawn back to the technology for even quick uses to re-center themselves and check on friends.
No one can deny that we are in a time of rapid technological and cultural change that is transforming our lives. Seven years ago, smart phones, iPads, 3D TVs and Kindles were not in our lives, not to mention social websites like Twitter and Facebook. These are enabling changes in how we relate to one another and the rhythms of our lives. But changes are normal. As we know from anthropological studies now and in the past, technology doesn't change us, it is what we do with it - we are agents of change. I saw a recent tweet that captures this notion. Terrisenft (07/27/2010 7:27 PM): "It's as much Twitter's fault you have a short attn span as it is your closet's fault you don't have running shoes." Indeed, technology offers an opportunity to change, but really it is up to us to decide what we do with it; it does not act on us.
-ken
Ken Anderson:
Ken Anderson, a symbolic anthropologist, has been a leader in innovative research of people and their practices and turning those insights into corporate strategy. He is currently working on Intel's strategy for the coming ten years.
Ken's suggested reading/links:
How our interaction with technology is causing us to change the way we think: Nicholas Carr's The Shallows
The dark side of Web 2.0 for society: James Lanier's You Are Not a Gadget - Random House
How technology enables us to use little moments of free time to do great things: Clay Shirky's Cognitive Surplus - Penguin Books
Futurist on rapid technological change: Alvin Toffler 's Future Shock - Random House
Popcorn, now chips at the movies??
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