Category Archives: technology
Conscious Computing
Our focus has been on technologies as prosthetics for the mind, and human-as-machine style productivity. This has led to burn-out, poor health, poor sleep, and what I call email apnea or screen apnea. We wonder where our attention has gone. Turns out, it’s right where we left it — with our ability to breathe fully. What if technology became a prosthetic for our beings? Continue reading
A Badass Musician & a Sixth Degree Aikido Black Belt Advise on Email Apnea
Watching Cameron Carpenter play the organ is a transcendant experience. It’s as if he’s “lit.” The organ just sits there, and Carpenter’s body exudes a powerful energy. Most of us, when we interact with digital technologies, “merge” our energies with the device, exhausting ourselves. Experienced musicians don’t do this. In the evolution of our relationship with digital devices, we have a lot to learn from experienced musicians. Continue reading
Point of View is Worth 80 IQ Points
“Point of view is worth 80 IQ points,” is a constant guiding consideration for me. It comes to mind when I convene groups or organize advisory boards for companies: Is there a diverse mix of thinkers, personalities, and expertise represented? It’s on my mind when I organize dinner parties. In the years I spent working at Apple and Microsoft, it was on my mind when I made hiring decisions and assembled teams to work on any type of project. Continue reading
Filed under innovation, technology
This is What the Future Looks Like
Over the last few weeks, I’ve been noticing that about a third of people walking, crossing streets, or standing on the sidewalk, are ON their cell phones. In most cases, they are not just talking; they are texting or emailing — attention fully focused on the little screen in front of them. Tsunami warning? They’d miss it. Continue reading
The Hair Dryer that Got Away
For many of us, our evolving relationship with technology in a 24/7, mobile, always-connected world, traps us in a hyper-focus on the screen, and a blindness to the rich world around us. Continue reading
Perpetual Inattentional Blindness
Our relationships with our SmartPhones, and this wicked habit that many of us, of walking or driving while texting or talking, hold us in a state of perpetual inattentional blindness. Continue reading
Filed under attention, attention management, distraction, multi-tasking, technology
Dee Hock’s 1996 Quote…
Today, we are Knowledge Workers evolving into Understanding Workers. Understanding Workers use technology to anticipate, judge and act. Think about it. This is what we’re doing with FitBit, Quantified Self, 23andMe.com, Facebook, and so many other technologies of this era. Continue reading
iPads Everywhere!
The iPad is the iPod of reading. The world around you disappears when you engage with it. Continue reading
Filed under attention, email apnea, engaged, iPad, O'Reilly Media, technology
Conscious Computing
Personal technologies today are prosthetics for our minds. Our opportunity is to create personal technologies that are prosthetics for our beings. Conscious computing is post-productivity, post-communication era computing. Personal technologies that enhance our lives. Personal technologies that are prosthetics of our full human potential. Continue reading
Kids, Video Games, Posture & Breathing
One of my favorite 8 year olds can’t get enough of his Wii. I enjoy this child and hung out with him recently while he played his favorite video game. He was hunched over on the sofa and I promise … Continue reading
Filed under attention, breathe, breathing, email apnea, exhale, health, overwhelmed, screen apnea, stress, technology, Uncategorized
It’s Not the WHAT, it’s the HOW…
Are We at War with Technology, considers the relationship between the WHAT (technology), the HOW (how we’re using it) and the human (us). Continue reading
How has the Internet Changed the Way You Think?
The Internet stole my body, now a lifeless form hunched in front of a glowing screen. My senses dulled as my greedy mind became one with the global brain we call the Internet. Continue reading
Filed under attention, distraction, engaged, health, O'Reilly Radar, technology
Screens R Us: When to Take a Break
The challenge is, most of us, especially the brainy future thinking high tech types, tend to favor the inclinations of the mind. The mind, for many of us, is often tyrannical towards the body. “Just stay up 3 more hours. One more all-nighter. A Red Bull or two and I’ll meet this deadline! No walk until this paper is done…” Continue reading
Why Managing Vulnerability and Reputation is More Important than Ever Before
In ZG Mapping, one of the patterns that emerges suggests that as technology becomes closer and closer to us, we are less able to manage privacy at each advancing layer. Today, through social networks, sensors, geo-location software, personal DNA testing, … Continue reading
Filed under privacy, reputation, technology, vulnerability, ZG Mapping, ZG Maps
Diagnosis: Email Apnea
In early 2007, at the suggestion of my M.D., I took a course in Buteyko breathing and incorporated it into my morning routine. I would get up, take a walk, do twenty minutes of Buteyko, then, sit down at my … Continue reading
