What would happen if humans were able to eliminate the feeling of boredom entirely?
The promise of productivity becomes ever more alluring. Today we are more connected and more informed. So why are most of us longing for more time to simply do nothing? To stare out the window? To knock about inside the corners of our own minds?
It turns out the human brain needs boredom. Boredom leads to creativity, clarity, and, Minoush Zomorodi says, even brilliance.
In 2015, when journalist and radio host Zomorodi led listeners on a journey to rethink their relationships with tech, I followed along. I wasn't addicted to my phone, far from it. I joined the online experiment because I wasn't addicted and I craved validation. I wanted to connect to a community of people who were thinking deeply about the role of technology in their lives. I needed to know there were others who believed multitasking was disruptive and that real life was more valuable than an obsessive social media presence.
Let's go a back a few years. I was the kid my parents assigned to do the "boring" chores. (Sit in the meadow and hold the horse's tether while she grazes. Walk to the end of the long gravel driveway to pick up the mail.) They knew I would take twice as long as needed. They knew I would wander and daydream. It's a testament to their parenting how much they simply let me be.
Today I do my mental wandering outside the office because a daily two-hour radio broadcast moves swiftly, sometimes even obsessively. And yet, In the Moment has always been a delicate tribute to the power of slow. An In the Moment conversation is almost always one that takes its time. I hold some of these conversations so dearly, I find myself thinking about what was said days (months even) after the initial broadcast.
Here is one such conversation, this one with Minoush Zomorodi herself. I think I'll need some time to mull this one over, and I hope you join me in the contemplation. Don't worry if we see one another staring out the window instead of at our phones. We don't need to rescue ourselves from perceived boredom. Brilliance is right around the corner.
Lori Walsh:
Welcome back to In the Moment, I'm Lori Walsh. Award-winning author, journalist and radio host, Manoush Zomorodi is fascinated by the intersection of technology and brain science, specifically what's happening inside our brains when we get bored. It turns out when we reach for our electronic devices in that twinge of boredom, we bypass one of the brain's most important functions, the ability to think with originality, creativity and clarity.
Zomorodi is author of the book, “Bored and Brilliant: How Spacing Out Can Unlock Your Most Productive and Creative Self.” She's coming to Northern State University in Aberdeen this week as part of the Common Read, and this year the event is supported by the Larry and Julie Poeppel Family Endowment. You can attend the free lecture Wednesday, November 13th in the Johnson Fine Arts Center. Doors open at 6 p.m. and that event is free.
I spoke with Manoush Zomorodi on the phone last Friday.
You're on your way to South Dakota. You're talking about the book “Bored and Brilliant” with Northern State University students for the Common Read, and you are one of those early thinkers. Early on you're thinking about how tech is interacting not only with our lives but also with our relationships to ourselves and with our brains. Did you feel like you were one of those early people? You were kind of on the forefront of that and then things started changing really, really fast.
Manoush Z.:
There was this moment, 2012, 2013 where everyone was kind of high on the promise of what technology was going to do for us. You could tap an app on your smartphone and boom, a meal or a car would appear, and it just felt a little bit like magic. I think it took a few years for people to start to understand that there are costs with being able to have drivers available at all hours, and that these companies, we didn't really understand how they were funded. The fact that when venture capitalists invest tens of millions of dollars into these companies, they want to see these companies scale as quickly as possible. And along the way, sometimes humans get hurt.
I think I was called by a few people, maybe a little paranoid or kind of a downer in the early years. But I think now, those same people might take it back. I've been also called a canary in a coal mine.
I think what's so interesting to me is this idea that technology could so fundamentally change very human things like how we read or how we parent or how we fall in love, where we work, and that's really why I became so passionate about reporting about technology. I think now we're at an extremely crucial moment in starting to put rules and understand that maybe just allowing things to progress as they have doesn't work. We need to be thinking about regulation. We need to be thinking about frameworks. And so I think it's going to be a tough couple of years as we figure out how we start to rein things in where it's not working and also lean into the very wonderful things that do indeed come out of technology.
Lori Walsh:
And one of the arguments that comes up right away is that another country, say, China, is just going to mow forward fast and not worry about some of those things that we are going to spend a little more time contemplating about the nature of the impact of technology on democracy or ethics. How do you address people who say, "Yeah and we have to stay competitive?"
Manoush Z.:
Agreed, absolutely. But when we compare ourselves to China, we also need to compare and question what kind of society we want to live in. In China, they are using technology to have scores on people's behavior that they measure. There are ways that people have absolutely zero digital privacy, and those are the things that hold us dear.
We’ve got to play the long game on this one. I think dismissing our basic democratic rights in the name of innovation and a competitive economy is extremely shortsighted. And I think that's what we've been doing as these companies concentrate so much on quarterly earnings as opposed to longer-term impacts on society. We reward shareholders, but we don't reward the actual communities and families and societies that use these technologies. We’ve got to play the longer game on this.
Lori Walsh:
Do you think Congressional lawmakers have been fully prepared when we talk about regulations and looking at privacy? Have they understood as deeply as they needed to what exactly was happening in some of these companies and how they were using things like facial recognition, the potential for it? How is Congress kept up with what's happening in tech?
Manoush Z.:
Yeah. And I would say it's not just Congress, it's the FTC, it's the FCC, the other federal organizations. Where as much as I think they would like to be fully briefed on all of these technologies, they either, A, don't have the bandwidth or, B, they don't have the people advising them. So there are very, very few in Congress who actually have a knowledgeable technologist on their staff, extremely few. There's no budgeting for it.
I get really excited that places like the Ford Foundation are starting a new initiative called Public Interest Technology, where they are working with a handful of academic institutions to create a pipeline. Back in the 60s and 70s, that was the first time we had something called Public Interest Law. Where you could learn how to be a lawyer and how to apply it to the public good.
And what these academic institutions and the Ford Foundation and other players are working to do is create the same thing. That if you're a student who is good at science and math and computer science, or maybe you're not and you’re interested in public policy, how can we start to make sure that you become a well-rounded person who understands how technology impacts society, what the legal ramifications maybe should be? And how do we make sure that those people want to go to Washington or want to go to their state capitol to advise lawmakers on a local, on a state, and on a federal level?
Lori Walsh:
To the point of the book, “Bored and Brilliant,” and tying in to what you just said about what's happening in technology... Talk to us about the neuroscience of boredom and what's happening in our brains in those moment where we get a little bit restless and then pick up our phones.
Manoush Z.:
I wonder if some people listening are like, "Wait a minute. She's talking about having technologists on Capitol Hill. How does that relate to boredom?"
And actually, I'm going to try to draw that line for you right now. Which is my whole way of getting interested in the ramifications that technology has on us as individuals and as a society was a moment where I was like, "Wow, I am really struggling these days." In 2014, I was really struggling to come up with creative ideas. I can only describe it as having sand in my brain is what it felt like. And so I began to think about all those moments when I'm waiting to pick up my kids or am in line for coffee. Those moments where I used to just allow my mind to wander and think about things, now I fill them with time with my phone. It's an opportunity to be productive, to text my husband about what we're going to have for dinner or to check my calendar, to read my email, see the news.
So I began to question, if we are bored, what could we possibly be missing? Is this sort of human state that we think is something to be avoided at all costs, is it actually deeply fundamental to us in some way? And as I did research, I began to understand that we activate a particular network in our brain when we become bored and that network is responsible for some of our most original thinking, for our problem solving and for something called autobiographical planning. This is actually telling ourselves the story of ourselves. Who are we? What have we experienced so far that brought us to this very moment to listening to this interview? And where are we going to go next week? Five years from now? What goals are we going to set and how are we going to begin to plan out the steps we need to reach those goals?
Really it's like time travel in our brains and we don't have that extraordinary time traveling mechanism if we're tapping Instagram to see what's happening right this minute. It’s not an anti-tech book. It's more about understanding more deeply some of the human things that we have not prioritized as we've become such a digital people.
Lori Walsh:
And I want to reemphasize that point that it's not a throw-your-phone-into-a-drawer-and-never-look back, because in some ways there's no meaningful way to opt out of tech in this day and age. From a professional standpoint, most of us are expected to do some kind of social media presence. This is about thinking more deeply about what's happening, why it's happening, and how you can regain your agency.
And I want to talk about this idea of whether or not we have any agency? As we learned more and more about how people were mining our data and looking at our “digital exhaust” and using artificial intelligence and deep learning to predict our behavior, do we have the agency we think we do when it comes to the digital world?
Manoush Z.:
Lori, that is the big question I think that you just completely put your finger on, and I want to thank you for not saying to put down your phone sort of call-to-action. It's really not. I think the Cambridge Analytica scandal sort of to me is the event that sums up your question in many ways. This idea that political operatives could gather so much data on us that they know exactly what kind of advertisements to place in front of us to make us feel certain ways and then nudge us to vote certain ways.
To be clear, it has never been proven that psychometrics, which is what that field is called, it's never been proven that psychometrics actually worked in the 2016 election; however, we live in an accelerating time. Things are moving extremely fast. And for now, really the only place we remain autonomous over is our brain for now, until we get chips, right?
But your phone knows where you are. It knows how fast you're walking. It knows what you're doing. It knows pretty much everything about you. And as you said, to be a functioning human in the world, you probably need to be on it. Certainly as a working mom, it makes my life possible. I can keep track of where my kids are and make sure they're safe and do my job.
But I think we are coming to a point where we can begin to understand that putting the burden on individuals and consumers is unfair. Because I do believe that we've never lived in an age where technology has been so personalized, where they're able to potentially exploit the wonderful things that humans have, which are thoughts and opinions and beliefs. And we've seen how conversation online often gets perverted in many ways when we take away some of the human things that make a nuanced conversation, like eye contact, like body language, like patience with each other and listening.
So I think we're at a crossroad where we have to look to see how the government plays a role, how we as individuals do the best we can. That we continue to care and don't just say, "Well, who cares? It doesn't matter if they have my data. I have nothing to hide." Well, that's not the point here. The point is to think beyond yourself and think there are people who because of their religious affinity or gender or sexual orientation depending on what society thinks, may indeed be in jeopardy.
It's a collective responsibility that I think we, as consumers, need to take, but we need help with that. And that requires, I think, Silicon Valley starting to have a bit of a wake-up call, which seems to be happening. We need shareholders to push back and demand more of those companies. And we certainly need Washington, and actually more and more our state legislatures to also make sure that we link arms with them as well.
Lori Walsh:
Let's put these two things back together as we wrap up this notion of being bored, and then this notion of an election. Because one of the things that you make this connection with so clearly is regarding that moment where you give yourself time to think and consider instead of having a knee-jerk reaction. And no matter who your candidate happens to be, you need to be aware of this right now. Not only about something basic like the privacy settings on your phone, but when you see something, giving yourself time to reflect before you decide, act, think, retweet, that sort of thing. Tie this notion of "boredom" in with what's happening in America politically today.
Manoush Z.:
I mean, I'm a person who likes to move fast. I live in New York City. I like to be doing multiple projects. I am a multitasker even though I know physically that's impossible. But I really truly believe we've reached a capacity. I think of that moment when I first got a smart phone and I was on a conference call and I was at the playground with my kid, and I was like, "This is amazing. I can be in two places at once."
And now here we are and I'm like, "You know what? It's not so great to mentally be in two places at once." One time my kids fell off the swings and I wasn't really listening to that conference call anyway. Humans are linear human beings. We have reached some capacity, I think, at this point. And so I think we need to remind ourselves to proceed at our pace, not necessarily at a computer processor's pace.
Lori Walsh:
We give you permission right now to turn off your radio and think about what you just heard for a while. It's okay. We'll be here when you get back.
Minoush Zomorodi joined In the Moment on November 12, 2019