Newport on Bradbury's The Murderer
Monday, August 31, 2020
Cal Newport recently offered his thoughts on one of those science fiction stories that reads like a prophecy. Ray Bradbury's short story, The Murderer, is about one Albert Brock, a man who has been committed to a mental asylum after destroying all his communication devices. I'll re-post an excerpt here, of what happens after the psychiatrist recommends a commitment of indefinite duration:
This all occurs, Newport points out, while the patient "relaxes in luxurious silence.""Three phones rang. A duplicate wrist radio in his desk drawer buzzed like a wounded grasshopper. The intercom flashed a pink light and click-clicked. Three phones rang. The drawer buzzed. Music blew in through the open door. The psychiatrist, humming quietly, fitted the new wrist radio to his wrist, flipped the intercom, talked a moment, picked up one telephone, talked, picked up another telephone, talked, picked up the third telephone, talked, touched the wrist-radio button, talked calmly and quietly, his face cool and serene, in the middle of the music and the lights flashing, the phones ringing again, and his hands moving, and his wrist radio buzzing, and the intercoms talking, and voices speaking from the ceiling ... "
A man at cross-purposes... (Image by Todd Trapani, via Unsplash, license.)
Newport isn't egging us on to imitate Brock, but he does want us to think about how purposefully we're using these devices. (At least that's my impression; I haven't gotten to Digital Minimalism yet.)
This matter is complicated by the fact that these devices are used for communication. One might, alone, decide to use them on a set schedule or for a given purpose, but there will be headwinds against both from the demands of others. Unless one pairs self-discipline with a clear delineation (and enforcement) of boundaries with others (such as described by one of Newport's commenters), the discipline will be for naught.
In light of the latter, there have been times when I would have protested calling Bradbury's short story science fiction, and would have insisted on calling it fantasy instead.
-- CAV
6 comments:
I'm on the fence about Newport. On the one hand, I certainly agree that we need to be more intentional in our use of technology. I have told multiple people that I'll have a flip-phone until they stop making them, because I don't WANT the issues that come with the smartphones. On the other hand, Newport's advice strikes me as applicable to only a certain type of work. His advice on block scheduling, for example, works well on a job where you have a great deal of control over your time, but not all jobs are like that. Anyone who's worked construction can attest to the fact that about the only thing you can be sure of with a schedule is that it's the one thing that will never happen! There are a lot of jobs that have a reactive component to them that makes them not amenable to rigorous scheduling.
Another example is the short story you reference. Yes, in some jobs you need to limit distractions so you can focus. But when I have multiple teams in the field doing dangerous jobs in dangerous areas, those phone calls aren't distractions--answering them is part of the job. In my case, it's literally in the job description. I'm not saying this should be the way all jobs should work; I'm just saying that it's a valid type of work. (Modern technology makes this easier, as I can know, before answering, who is calling me and whether it's worth answering!)
Like you, I enjoy reading. It's earned me some strange looks. I remember once getting free dessert at a restaurant because while I was eating I was reading and taking notes. The manager was fascinated at the concept of a person studying for pleasure. My children are picking up on the habit, too, trying to "misbehave" by reading after bedtime--a type of misbehavior that I'm not strongly discouraging!
Dinwar,
You are right to be on the fence about Newport, and I agree that his advice only applies to certain occupations or kinds of work: Some occupations have what Paul Graham calls maker's schedules, others manager's schedules, and many various proportions of each. I'd say that Newport is great for maker's work. For manager's work, David Allen is your man.
Gus
Yo, Gus, you write, "For manager's work, David Allen is your man." Whom I always think of first as Dave Allen, who among other things did this famous sketch that inspired the cover of this famous ska album.
That guy's good based on the "bloody nun" joke I took a quick listen to. Thanks for bringing up this other David Allen. I'd managed never to hear of him.
Interestingly, I watched Dave Allen a lot as a teenager. The PBS station in the Metroplex was the first in the US to show Monty Python's Flying Circus, so due to their "special relationship" (heh) with the Beeb, they got access to a lot of popular British comedies. Dave Allen was my favorite of the first few batches apart from MPFC, and not so much because he was an atheist (though I appreciated that) but because he was an excellent comedian. (Amusingly, they showed The Paul Hogan Show back before Crocodile Dundee was made, so I actually knew who he was before he took the US by storm; on the other hand, Blackadder and a couple of other really big hits post-dated my PBS-watching tenure, so I had to play a little catch-up there. One of the later ones I mostly missed was one I know you enjoyed, Chef.)
As for Ray Bradbury, he was a good short-story writer and good stylist; this story is like many of his I've read in capturing one particular mood or making one particular point at just the right length. (I do agree with Martin Prince here though. Alfred Bester was a much sharper satirist, much more an SF writer, and much more to my tastes--he also wrote two excellent novels, which in my opinion is one more than Bradbury managed. Another point of similarity is that both of them definitely peaked in the 1950s, though Bradbury's decline was less sharp.) But even with this sort of theme, something like escaping the device-mediated urgency of modern life, there are sharper satires that make deeper points than that; J.G. Ballard's "Chronopolis" comes to mind, especially its last paragraph.
Snedcat,
I also somehow missed MPFC until my time in the Navy, although my mother has at various times gotten me into several British comedies that were on PBS, namely Fawlty Towers, Keeping Up Appearances, and Mr. Bean.
Knowing a good source of comedy, I'd later discover Chef! and Are You Being Served on my own.
Gus
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