Sometimes it seems the universe is a comedian. Prior to this interview with the host of the New Tech City podcast host and new media journalist Manoush Zomorodi, a fire alarm and evacuation prompted a delay-of-game. When the conversation was able to convene, the ancient speakerphone kept cutting off. It was because we were going to talk about the podcast’s Bored and Brilliant project, I’m sure of it.
Who hasn’t seen viral pictures of passengers waiting for a train, all heads down, engrossed in their phones rather than in the present moment? The Bored and Brilliant project wasn’t necessarily about that, although aspects were. It was about what that constant preoccupation was displacing: time to daydream, to chew on concepts and ideas, and to have that blank mental space in which to do it. “For me, it wasn’t so much having difficulty being bored,” Zomorodi said. “I just never had to be bored because I was always looking at my phone. It made me wonder...was that a bad thing in any way?”
With that question now firmly in place, Zomorodi set out to first find out what goes on when the brain has nothing going on. “It turns out there’s a ‘default mode,’ a network in the brain that activates when our bodies are idle. The brain goes into a very active state where it does something called ‘autobiographical planning.’” This state moderates the planning of goals; retroactive contemplation to make sense of past actions and experiences, assigning meaning to them; and making decisions on how to proceed. By mentally acting these things out in the calmness of supposed boredom-thought, the individual can dissect and learn from the past and decide how to apply that knowledge to the future. “It’s a lot like time travel that happens when we’re in the default mode, a lot of problem-solving, and it’s the place where the most original creative thinking happens,” Zomorodi said.
“The research (in what smartphones are actually doing to the brain) is incredibly preliminary,” Zomorodi added. “This worried me because, by the time researchers would know this, and what impact that would have had on the good stuff that’s supposed to be happening in the brain, I will have been looking on my phone for over a decade!”
Having a constant companion to fill in those voids of time can be complicating and distracting. The Bored and Brilliant project posed a week of challenges to listeners of Zomorodi’s podcast, broadcast in part on New York public radio station WNYC. “We had over 18,000 people sign up for the project. We tracked data with approximately 4-to-5 thousand people who shared their phone data with us.”
The overarching goal of the project was never to create a phone-cessation period, much less to have people quit cold turkey. It was always about getting people to think about the action of usage rather than impulsively, mindlessly acting. With that as the proviso, Zomorodi and her team were not surprised to find the rates of usage weren’t dropping sharply. “We cut down about six minutes per day of phone time, but we did hear a lot of interesting and personal stories. Maybe they didn’t put down their phones as much as they’d have liked to, but they became aware and more purposeful as to how they were using their phones.”
Roughly a month after the project’s conclusion, the after-effects -- both positive and possibly troublesome -- are being analyzed. “A participant who lives in Brooklyn told us that he had woken up from mental hibernation. Students said they were starting to understand their studies (better) because they weren’t multitasking.”
This separation, even in such small doses, was having a profound effect, but also provided a bit of anxiety for some participants. “It was interesting. Game-players shaved off the most phone-usage time: around twenty minutes per day.” That can be correlated to the fact that games are designed specifically to be addictive and time-consuming; particularly the online varieties that monetize elements of the gameplay. Losing that much time of phone use, it can be interpreted, is equal to the time lost when a game-player gets too entrenched in the game, something Zomorodi knew first-hand. “One of the challenges of the project was called Delete That App. I deleted the app that had been driving me bananas: a game called Two Dots. I had been spending ridiculous amounts of time on it.”
“I have not reinstalled it, I’m happy to say...but like a smoker misses cigarettes, I miss my game,” Zomorodi admits. “I know it’s not the best use of my time or my brain, and so I’m resisting, but it’s kind of a constant struggle! I’m shocked by how often the parallels and metaphors relate to addiction, and also relate to healthy living.”
Since its debut in late 2012, the New Tech City podcast has undergone a slight tonal shift. While technology is still transformative and disruptive, as business gurus might say, those transformations and disruptions can go either way. Zomorodi noted that the first flush of tech exploration promised much, delivered much, but changed more than just how we as users do things. The tone of the show had to change, slightly, because we were changing too. This was something the Bored and Brilliant project illustrated very clearly.
“We’re at a point where we’ve had this portable, personal technology around us for a while. The iPhone came out in 2007, so the euphoria hasn’t completely worn off, but now people are starting to realize that there needs to be thoughtful consideration about how we incorporate technology into our lives.” Zomorodi added, “Yes, it has replaced some of the annoying things we had to do...great! But it also has replaced some of the good things we used to do. I don’t want to get prescriptive about this in any way, but I feel people need to think very carefully for themselves. Hopefully, the New Tech City podcast gives them the tools and the knowledge to make the right choices for themselves.”
Perhaps another illustration of the changes the podcast, and the initial radio program, have undergone resides in one of Zomorodi’s first stories. She signed on to a community-building social media site, meant strictly to bring together your immediate neighbors in your town. There was great excitement and plenty of enthusiasm for what this might turn out to be. It turned out to be underwhelming.
“Actually, I went back and checked on that very recently, and it still hadn’t grown. The one thing that has brought my neighborhood together is that there has been construction going on. That’s brought people together (because) they’re very upset about it!”
New Tech City is starting to grow past its radio roots, almost necessarily, as the podcast medium breaks through the standard broadcast constraints. “People want to experiment with themselves in a way I did not expect. They want to try new things, but they like knowing there’s a community to do that with.” Zomorodi said that she knew she was connecting when, in her own office, people were showing they were responding to Bored and Brilliant challenges on the day, and the idea that thousands all over the world who were subscribers of the podcast, were doing it too. It wasn’t just an odd plan hatched by a single person who had to shoulder the burden of doing something different. There were a lot of people getting in on the plan, and there was strength in trying outsider ideas without necessarily being an outsider.
“That intimacy between me and the listener is very different than the regular radio show where you present information,” Zomorodi said. “It used to be that you’d listen to a show which would say, ‘Here’s the question. Here’s the answer.’ We don’t have definitive solutions or answers for a lot of these questions, because the questions are just too new. Technology is changing all the time. We all use it very differently from each other. But the more we know, the more we can make better choices for ourselves.”
With that, the interactivity; the call-and-response that technology, in its better aspects, enables so well; and the reach that a program without specific time/date restraints can capitalize upon are all pointing in the same direction for Zomorodi and the New Tech City podcast team. “Our plan is to turn to the audience a lot in terms of asking them, ‘What’s on your mind,’ ‘what are you feeling weird about,’ and ‘can we help you find the answers?’ If we don’t have the answers, we have the ability to find the utmost experts and the right people to ask, who can. (Our audience) wants to talk about what the right way to use technology in society and in their lives is.”
“Granted, this is rather a self-selecting group, but I think it would be very wise for tech people to listen to them,” Zomorodi concluded. “They’re bringing up things society as a whole is going to start asking as well.”
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