Today is day 16 without a cell phone or social media. It feels like forever. I am confident I will never go back to carrying a telephone, that part of the experiment has been easy, and it is safe to say, a resounding success. The facebook blackout has also been a success. My efficiency has skyrocketed, as well as my emotional maturity. I find it hard to believe that something so simple could make such a huge difference. The increase in productivity doesn't surprose me, that's a pretty simple cause and effect: remove distractions and you get more done. What I find surprising is the effect on my emotional well being.
     First, let me recap what I have done and update some of the interim changes. I intended to blog more  describing this experience but studying is the first priority and I've been in the zone. For the entirety of winter break I have been studying for my PhD physics qualifying exam. It is a mammoth undertaking. I have to essentially memorize 150 problems that take at least a page to solve. The Friday before Christmas I woke up late in the afternoon after having been up way too late and my first instinct was to get on facebook to update political arguments and then start texting. This was accompanied by a sense of doom, that my present path was going to lead to failure on several accounts. It probably wouldn't have, really, one of my greatest skills in life is holding things together under the most heinous of circumstances, but regardless, I don't want to have a survival existence. So what, I'm a physicist, that only impresses people for about 5 minutes. If that's my only accomplishment in life, I'm a failure. I'm looking for inner peace.
     So, in search of inner peace and a 60% on my qual exam (its so difficult that a 60 is passing), I gave up my cell phone and all social media. Incidentally, I think I've hit on a brilliant new dotcom venture: one that locks you out of your distracting social media and website acccounts for certain hours of the day. You give them your password and they change it from 9-5.
     I felt the difference immediately. By about day 4, I already knew I probably wasn't going back to having a cell phone. I am a bit ahead of the tech curve and I think I represent the next phase in communication. I think I'll call it "LCARS" (you get there first, you get to name it). For those of you who had a life while growing up, LCARS is the fictional shipboard operating system and interface on Star Trek TNG. TNG predates cell phone ubiquity, so that may have more to do with their suspicious absence of omnipresent communication devices than any technical prescience. However, their solution is, in my opinion, better than cell phone ubiquity. Active duty starfleet have a comm badge that activates for official ship communication, that is worn and not carried. It serves one purpose: to talk. Normal citizens carry nothing. Other than that, technological and communication needs are met through an intelligent speaking and touch interface that can serve (among many other things) as a telephone. My point is, I think that the end of the cell phone era will come, and people will no longer carry a device full time for communication. They won't have to because their TV will no longer be a tv, it will be a tv, computer, office, internet, and videophone. But I must be clear, I don't think this is a completely "natural" evolution. I think, if I'm correct, that it will be a conscious next step taken to restore balance to an overly tech-dependent lifestyle.
     For me, the peace comes from having time to think through my actions and feelings. I've got a lot of good qualities; I'm hard working, intelligent, sensitive, caring, funny, and a damn fine singer. I am not, however, patient. There are many sources of my impatience: my drive for success, need for order, insecurity, and I'm sure it links to how I was raised as well. The end result is, between my upbringing and the technology age, I've gotten used to immediate response to every impulse, and I forgot how to sit still. I've since become aware of my irrational emotional response to absence of immediate 'feedback' and my panic at the idea of a delay in gratification. To sum up, since I've given up the immediate payoff of tech, I have come to realize that not all thoughts are good and not all feelings represent reality. I'm sure that's a seemingly obvious realization to the reader, but in these times it is a realization easier discussed than accomplished.
    My increase in productivity was quite large, but still not as great as I hoped. For one thing I substituted Reddit for Facebook. On its own merits, reddit is far better than facebook, but for the purposes of this experiment, was just like giving up coke to take up crack. So yesterday I had the same friend lock me out of reddit. About a week ago I was pondering the days ahead, including what I would do after my exam. This experiment will not be complete if the first thing I do after it is over is run back to Facebook.

Day 7, Friday

I have now spent 1 week without a cell phone or social media. To recap: I had a friend lock me out of facebook and other social media by changing my password, and another friend has taken possession of my phone. I will spend 30 days this way. I have decided to amend the conditions to limit my consumption of any media content through television or computer when not working.
      Christmas was 3 days ago. It was alright, I don't like spending it alone but I haven't had a chance to make friends outside my department, and most of my physics friends don't celebrate Christmas. I decided to postpone the full media blackout because EVERYTHING in Baton Rouge is closed on Christmas. I watched 3 movies and sat still the whole time, not undertaking any other activity. It was quite nice, I really enjoyed the movies for a change.
      In the 2 nights since I have continued to stay up way too late, even while attempting to limit my technological interaction. The reason, as I discovered last night, is pretty simple: there is not a lot to do in the home at night without a television. I could read, and under normal circumstances I think that is a fine alternative to the boob tube, but I read for a living. I do love to read for pleasure, but the point of this exercise is partly to encourage me to partake other activities I like but don't normally do. I don't think reading fits this description.
     I have no choice but to change my sleep schedule. It is intimately related to this experiment anyway, in my mind. I watched no TV last night, but one can only sit quietly for about an hour before getting bored. I gave up and surfed Reddit for a few hours before falling asleep at 5 am. The upside of this is that my social media blackout has forced me to explore other content on the web. I didn't really know anything about reddit before, but its a pretty interesting place. I also bought an electric keyboard today, as I've been meaning to learn to play for sometime.
    I would like to talk now about my cognitive experience during this experiment. After all, the original intention was to increase the efficiency of my studies. I have previously been cautious of any attempt to cram more work into my already limited span of attention for fear of violating the law of diminishing returns. Even still, I always had a feeling that I wasn't as effective during the hours I was already working, but I didn't know why.

     I now know why.

     I think I can say unequivocally that the hyper availability, over sharing, and constant connectedness of my smart phone combined with social media caused my thinking to be so fragmented, sporradic, and stunted that I was in a constant state of panic and stress. Whenever I was working I was so inefficient that I had to devote an inhuman portion of my waking hours to work, and whenever I wasn't working I was always thinking about work I should have been doing. The peace and calm I feel since are quite amazing and I would never have predicted this level of success.
    The difference I feel is more substantial than just that, and it will be hard to describe but I will give it a shot. I feel more self contained. My ideas, feelings, and emotions prior to this time felt like they were the property of the world, and I felt compelled to take some action via text, email, or facebook whenever something disturbed me. The result was that I always felt disturbed. I always felt as if I was being violated or taken advantage of in some way. It may be just my privacy that was being violated, even if I was the violator. I forgot what it was like to allow a train of thought to complete on its own, and the subsequent release. I feel as though my hopes, fears, dreams, and anxieties exist only for me, but also that they exist only in my own head.
     The funny thing is I don't share personal details via facebook. I don't list my relationship status, I don't bitch about fights with friends or family, I don't post passive/aggressive complaints regarding unnamed friends, and I NEVER talk about my feelings. I only use it for politics, social issues, and to stay in touch now that I live far from my friends and loved ones. I can only imagine the intensity of this privacy violation for those that put everything out there.

Day 3: Christmas Eve. I'm not feeling quite as connected to the world as I hoped. I went to eat tonight at an establishment that had around 6 big screen tv's. They were all sports networks but I still stared throughout my meal. Last night I was up till very, very late and, though I slept peacefully and woke without stress, I still wish for a normal sleep schedule. I didn't even do anything that interesting. I watched Friends for 6 hours and played solitaire on my computer. Meanwhile I did not do the laundry I have had set aside for 3 days. This is my present dilemma, as I feel I should enforce a complete technology blackout for the span of this experiment. That is impossible because I am a computational physicist. Computers are my job. I love technology, not just using it but modding it, tweaking it, and fixing it. But clearly I have to establish some sort of boundaries on its use. Considering all the other non-tv things there are that I actually enjoy but never do, such as arts, crafts, music, cleaning, exercise, exploring, and others, that time I spent watching shows I have already seen a dozen times and playing one-person cards cannot have been six hours well spent. Besides, I like tv and movies and don't think there is anything inherently wrong with them. I think I have come up with a compromise though; rarely do I actually watch television. Its usually a background activity while I'm doing something else. When I say rarely, I mean almost NEVER, as in about ~1% of the time. As a compromise I have decided to limit myself to television only if I am actually watching, and not as a multitask in combination with another mindless activity (like solitaire). Considering how hard it is for me to sit still, this restriction should be pretty effective.

PS. I have another post brewing detailing the psychological differences I have noticed, but Its only been three days, so I want to wait a little longer for the effects to coalesce. I also plan to talk about my views on privacy issues. That wasn't a major motivation for this experiment but it is a great consideration when talking about tech in general and I plan to take steps to secure my privacy during this experiment, looking ahead to when I may be back to tech again.

How I divorced my cell phone.

I have a very important exam on 1/11 that I have to pass. I have another chance in the spring if I don't, but it would make my life a lot easier if I got it out of the way. My studying hasn't been efficient thanks to some turmoil in my personal life and some never ending gun arguments (post Sandy-hook, if you are reading this in the future) on Facebook, and I was starting to get a little distressed. Last night I had a brainstorm, and in the span of ~2 hours I had sent my phone to live with a friend and had another friend lock me out of Facebook and diaspora*, with instructions not to give me the new password for 3 weeks. I don't see any problem with lasting 3 weeks, and may try for a month just to round out the experiment. This blog post will document that month.

Day 1: Saturday. I have unconscious urges to check Facebook like an amputated limb. I still bounce around the 'net while studying, but I get back to work a lot quicker because I run out of things to look up. The cell phone separation is WEIRD. First, lets talk about going to the bathroom. I don't want to be indiscreet, but we all do it and I want to point out how weird it was to do it without my phone. I haven't had urges to check my phone like with FB, I don't know why, but today was the first day I woke up at a normal hour and was not completely stressed out. I am already contemplating porting my number to google voice and going without permanently. I don't think I want to carry a contact device anymore. I already feel the difference being forced to interact with the world, and my mind is a lot clearer. I feel like Seven of Nine.

Day 2: Sunday, 2 days before Christmas. The use of the word 'divorce' when describing this experiment was not hyperbole. My involvement with social media and communication is akin to a spouse. My cell phone is the first thing I think of when I wake up, the last thing I check before I go to sleep, and it is always with me in the interim. Whenever I am away from it for a period of time I start to think about when I can check it again. In addition to the constant companionship, I turn to it for communication and response to my needs at all times. Thus, in addition to filling the space that should belong to a human, it gives a false sense of connectedness with the outside world. It keeps you in fear and isolates you. If you think about it, its kind of like an abusive boyfriend. Well, I'm ditching this ball and chain.

Why gun owners are the problem and the solution.

If you are anywhere near my age you remember the cold war. Russia was the ultimate communist, godless enemy, and though I didn't really understand those concepts at the time, I knew enough that they were dangerous, and to be feared. We were indoctrinated with this belief from all directions. Fast forward to today where I reside in academia and work with students from all over the globe, Russia included. I now understand the context of the propaganda that bombarded us and how ridiculous it all was.

The arms race seems ridiculous to me, a pacifist, because in the end we were left with "Mutual Assured Destruction" (MAD) or the guarantee that any nuclear conflict would basically destroy life as we know it. So it was all a waste. I felt this way, until I watched the public broadcasting documentary on Ronald Reagan when I finally got it. I'm not even sure if the real motive was implicitly stated. Ronald Reagan and the rest of his administration were not stupid, and they never had any intention of using the weapons they were creating. That was not the real point of the arms race, Ronald's real goal was: to bankrupt the Soviet Union.

And it worked.

The oft quoted statistic this past week has been 310 million guns for 350 million citizens. That's roughly 1 gun for every 1.2 people. If you factor in ammunition, then there are enough weapons in this country to kill every man, woman, and child many times over. We have a phrase for that. (See previous paragraph).

Ronald Reagan knew that the arms race was futile, that you can only stockpile so many weapons before there will never be a winner; everyone will lose. There are so many logical and philosphical arguments against gun ownership that I get dizzy just thinking about it, and I get excited every time I think of a new one, but, as I think lots of anti gun people have experienced this week , it is tiresome and, like stockpiling an increasing stack of weapons, futile. I will not bother to offer any more because I think they've all been said. I'm only writing this post because I think I might have a new point of view to offer.

I hate guns. They are stupid, pointless, instruments of evil that are the redundant excuse for their own existence.

WE HAVE TOO MANY GUNS.

So I bet you expect me to start campaigning for renewal of the assault weapons ban, and tighter, stricter regulation? I admit I started out this week screaming for all of those things. I believe we need to tighten and standardize existing regulation, and clean up private sale and gun show loopholes, but I think we should leave gun laws alone.

I still think we need to get rid of them, the more the better, but after wasting my breath for a week blustering at gun advocates who's mind I was never gonna change, I realized that nothing will change until the hearts and minds of American's change. So for now I will not actively support any new gun restriction, to give a chance for a volunteer disarmament movement to take hold.

You may argue that if hearts and minds are changed, the guns become irrelevant, that they might as well be flower pots if the will to use them is no longer there. But in the mean time, the weapons which commit ALL crime started out as the legal purchase of a responsible citizen, and we need to close that channel.

We need gun buybacks, and gun safes, and gun insurance, but most of all we need the gun industry to voluntarily disarm. It has already happened. Several retailers have ceased sales. Cerberus, a major private equity firm that owns a large portion of gun manufacturers, including Bushmaster, is getting out of the gun business. But we can take it one step further: gun owners, if you own more than two guns, I challenge you, as a sign of good faith and community, to give up just one of your guns. Obviously it would be counter productive to sell them, but I'm sure the local police department, or gun range has many other alternatives.

But don't expect me to cry if they do renew the assault weapons ban, if only temporarily.

"I believe Louisiana is the pelican state" -Irwin M. Fletcher

I have been percolating this post for a while, and its time to tell the story of my trip before I forget about it. We (Jessica and myself) pulled out of Portland around 9pm last monday. I still had tons to do that day so we left the minute everything was done. The car was packed to the brim, and then Jessica's friend came over and used his ex-navy packing skills to make it even more cramped, and we definitely noticed it on our trip. The three hours we slept in the car were almost impossible. I would have been more comfortable if I had just laid on the steering wheel. The trip to vegas was interesting to say the least. For that leg, I had a copilot (Jessica), although my control issues prevented me from taking advantage of her driver's license as much as I could have. We filled up in Sandy, OR, and as we passed the last gas station in Madras, I had 3/4 of a tank. I had no idea that might not be enough. Several hundred miles later we hadn't passed any sign of civilization or even another car for several hours, and the needle kept dropping farther and farther past empty. Every mile of the last 70 amazed me. At one point I threw the car in neutral and coasted for a few miles of hill to eek out as much distance as I could. To the amazement of both of us, we made it to Denio Junction, NV, where there was a closed gas station. It was about 6 am and we were more than willing to wait out the 3 hours till they opened. We settle down to a sleep filled with strange dreams for both of us. We awoke and I bought $30 worth of $4.30/ gallon gas, enough to get us to Winnemucca. I was already delirious when we got there so I got some coffee. It was approx. 150 miles to Fallon, NV and Jessica slept to a soundtrack of The Boss, which she said made her dreams very theatrical. We pulled in to a gas station and I noticed the cooler was leaking all over everything. Jessica was hesitant to empty it in the interest of keeping things cool, so I went inside to get more ice. They wanted to charge me for it. It is a miracle the ice argument occurred, because I then discovered I had left my wallet in Winnemucca, which as I said, was 150 miles away. I called the shell and it was there, untouched. I had left it in the bathroom. As I said I was delirious. This little detour added ~4 hours to our trip, but Jessica was a sport and drove on the way back, after I bribed her with two big Juan burritos from Taco Time. The rest of the trip to Vegas was fairly uneventful, save for some deep conversation and a brief trip through a town called Hawthorne NV. It was an army town, and the evidence supporting this fact was so extreme it was almost cartoonish. On the way out was a surreal landscape of bunkers and training grounds. We rolled into Las Vegas at 1 am, whereupon I insisted on eating at In n Out Burger. We went to the home of her close friend and they both gallantly offered me the bedroom, leaving Jessica on the couch. I slept the best sleep I have had in years, and woke bright and bushy at 10:30 am, ready for the leg to Albuquerque. Jessica strategized my stops for me, locating which towns on the route were equally staggered and had hotels in which I could use my employee discount. Google told me Albuquerque was 7 hours away, so I added a little detour to the Grand Canyon.

Crazy is as crazy does

Recently it has come to my attention that someone I know is batshit crazy. I've known him for most of my life (he's a friend of my brothers) and always considered him more family than anything else. We tend to have rose colored vision when it comes to family. We never recognize negative traits when they're attached to people we love, and our particular brand of quirk is special, exempted from the rules that apply to most peoples lunacy. This is to be expected, and we'd probably never get through life otherwise. So this friend is very close to me. We have had our disagreements from time to time, but thats also to be expected, and as much as I sometimes questioned his decisions, I have never questioned his mental stability. I got a call from another mutual friend this week, and they wanted to discuss his latest escapades. I made minor small talk for a minute and she said "So are we going to talk about whats going on with --?" I was in the dark, oblivious if you will. Then she filled me in on some details in a year long drama that I was previously blind to. I'm kinda caught up in my work these days, as you may or may not have noticed (not offended if you didn't, after all, I wouldn't) so the hints and signs that had everyone else in our world up in arms completely escaped me. I can't tell you what is going on because it would get the rest of my family in trouble, but believe me when I tell you he is off his rocker. Lost the plot. Gonzo. Why in the world am I telling you all this? Other than the tiniest tidbit of gossip, what the hell do you care? 

Because it relates to me.

When I encounter people like this, who are decidedly short of sense, I am usually last one to suspect something may be amiss. I usually take people at their word (except men, but thats a different story) and don't question when they tell me crazy stories. It usually takes a third party to shed light on the issues. But when I finally do grasp the gravity of the situation, it makes me reevaluate my entire belief system. My thought process goes like this: 1. Who the hell are you to judge, look at the nutso crap you believe. 2. Are we sure they're not just misunderstood? 3. They are definitely crazy, so you probably are too, after all, you like them.