The bookshelves in Natasha Dow Schüll’s office at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology are punctuated here and there with kitchen timers: a windup orange plastic device, an egg-shaped stainless steel mechanical timer, a digital hourglass with falling pixels in lieu of sand.

At one time, Ms. Schüll, an associate professor at M.I.T.’s program in science, technology and society, employed these relics to track and manage her time while she was writing her doctoral dissertation.

Since then, she has graduated to a more controlling productivity aid. She uses software with the Orwellian name of Freedom to temporarily block Internet access on her computer. It forces her to stop browsing and concentrate on her writing.

“These are little shields against the temptations and fallibilities of being human,” Ms. Schüll said when I visited her recently to discuss her research on digital self-monitoring and self-modification devices.