Are Two Brains Better than One?

It’s a strange statement to read, but in a sense, the modern human has two brains. One resides in our skulls and the other in our pockets’. Odds are, you are using both right now.

So what’s it like to have two brains? That’s a hard question to contend to in words, but we all know the feeling, whether we are aware or not.

Let’s begin by navigating through Settings>Battery>Last 7 days

Here 👇

This is my battery usage. Feel free to psychoanalyze me or, better yet, psychoanalyze yourself. Really think hard about what you are looking at — about what those percentages mean. How many minutes in an hour are you spending on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Buzzfeed? At its core, Flat-Media is not completely valueless, but what is damaging is how much we have come to depend upon it for everything. We have retrained our brains to look for the Flat before the dynamic. Flat-Media is Intellectual fireworks — pretty to look at, but scarcely much else.

I’ll continue to be our guinea pig. Let’s imagine a world where I have a real job, with a normal people job with a normal people commute that costs me 60 minutes, each way. The battery photo above dictates that roughly 20 minutes of that hour are dedicated to mindless crap. If I work 5 days a week, that’s over 3 hours. The audiobook I’m listening to is about 18 hours. If I were to listen to the book during the time spent procrastinating, I would finish the book in 5 weeks. That’s ten 500 pages books in one year. The average American reads less than one.

I recently took a technological hiatus.

Guess for how long; I’ll give you the answer in a few paragraphs.

When my older brother graduated from high school in 2006, my mother decided to take her 3 boys and his friend on a trip through Italy and Greece. I was young, but I do remember parts of it — trudging up the Acropolis, snoring outside the Sistine Chapel, trying to figure out how entertained everyone was in the Coliseum.

One thing I also remember, vividly, is touching down in Logan International Airport. I long press ‘theEnd’ button on my ENV2 and begin swimming in the dopaminergic rush of 64 buzzifications. Sixty-Four, That sounds like a lot at once, but sixty-four in 12 days, that’s just five texts a day. fair.

So now, what was your guess from the screenshot? A week? Ten days? Fourteen?

One day.

At present, I’m looking at my computer screen with three little red bubbles at the bottom: 333 iMessages, 45 emails, and 11 WhatsApps 🙄. In twenty four hours. I was remarkably cooler then than I am now. So, why am I receiving 60 times more messages, per day, just over a decade later?

As a species, we can’t decide whether we hate or love this feeling. One year ago, I would have thought: “Hot damn! They missed me didn’t they?” But now, I look at it much differently. Having worked on decreasing the amount of input in my life (notifications, news, and all flat-media), seeing notifications is demoralizing — like a reminder that I will fail I almost never ignore people, so instead I wave goodbye to another hour from the 450,000 I have left.

How many will I lose tomorrow?

“Reacting to hell, I’ve found that my happiness increases proportional to how much I decrease my consumption of News and Twitter “ - Ryan Holiday

We live in an age where the spice of culture is written with and through technology. No matter what your personal experiences tell you, these technologies are neither bad nor good. They are change.

The difference between this article and the Social Media muck-rack is that I really, truly, want to help people cut down on distraction and Flat-Media. Whether we’re conscious of it or not, we are afflicted with a manifold of addictions. And I’m speaking as a recovering addict myself. (Though I will admit some, like Xbox Arcade crazes, are better than the biologically pernicious alternatives.)

In the last twelve months, I have transformed my own relationship with technology. And, in doing so, have become aware of just how mired in frivolity I really was. And, most importantly, I’ve seen all else that life has to offer.

I am no expert, but I am a millennial and a sometimes-harsh one at that. So I am serious about this: if you truly want to change things, send me an email with a story or a problem you or a friend has struggled with. I probably won’t have an answer, but some of my friends might - I’d wager there’s a podcast, book, or article to help

Otherwise, I’ll close with the following:

Question Everything. Your phone and your attention included.

Next Up: Political Garbitrage

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