Wednesday, September 15, 2010
The New York Times
September 14, 2010
In Bookstore’s End, No Joy for Sidewalk Seller
By JENNIFER MEDINA
Charles Mysak does not see himself as an island, entire of himself. He is a part of this city, a part of the main.
And as he sets up his makeshift used-book shop along a patch of Columbus Avenue each day, he remembers the words of John Donne: “Any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.”
Nearly four centuries ago, Donne suggested that we each die a little when another human being goes. For Mr. Mysak, when another bookseller closes shop, it means that he, too, is a little closer to a literary death.
So he takes little pride in the fact that at the end of January, his little table stacked high with used books will have outlived the giant Barnes & Noble less than two blocks south, near Lincoln Center. For him, it is just another sign of decay.
“Here’s the terrible aspect of all this,” Mr. Mysak said one recent afternoon, pointing to a shuttered bar just up the avenue. “If a saloon and bookstore can’t make it on the Upper West Side, what better evidence do you need than that of the decline of artistic and free thought? If this is happening here, what must you see in the hinterlands of America?”
For more than a decade, beginning after Barnes & Noble opened its doors, Mr. Mysak has sold from his collection of hundreds of used books. Instead of shelves, he uses a rickety old folding table, which he sets up south of 68th Street, along with some plastic crates and well-worn cardboard boxes. The prices are penciled inside the book covers, generally no more than $5, save for some classic out-of-print hardbacks.
Business is good enough to keep him coming back each morning around 7 to unload his car, a dark-green Honda Civic (held together by duct tape in a few spots), where he keeps his entire inventory. But for almost as long as he has been in business, he said, his take-home earnings have gotten smaller and smaller. These days, he is satisfied if he grosses more than $100 in a 12-hour day.
“Is it a living?” he asks, his mischievous grin spreading across his lips. “Don’t ask my wife that question.”
It almost does not seem to matter to Mr. Mysak, 59, of Wayne, N.J., who can be evangelical in his belief that “in this three-by-eight stand is the answer to every human question.”
In some ways, Mr. Mysak is an unlikely bookish hero — he was disbarred as a lawyer in New Jersey and was convicted of pilfering money from clients. But as he peers through his Coke-bottle glasses and alternately puffs and chomps on a stumpy cigar, he speaks in paragraphs and elliptical sentences that betray his voracious reading habits. (He returns to his favorites — H. L. Mencken and Raymond Chandler — several times each year.)
“There are days when 15 or 20 people pass by and might not even notice I’m here,” he said, as several pedestrians seemed to do just that. “A decade ago, if you saw someone covering their ear and talking to themselves, you would have thought they were just nuts. Today that’s the norm. It’s as if they are totally consumed by their own world and have no room for the outside. It is complete immersion in self to the exclusion of all else. That has to have an impact on the rest of our lives.”
So he does not see the downfall of Barnes & Noble — where he occasionally goes to warm up and use the restroom — or the decline of his own sales as some kind of business failing. It is, he laments, a reflection of society. The nearby Apple store, he notes, has no problem attracting customers, who walk out with slick white bags holding small devices with large price tags.
“People walk out of there as if they are in ecstasy,” he said.
He points to a row of books that include editions by Aldous Huxley, E. B. White and Ansel Adams. A decade ago, he said, those books would not have stayed on his table for more than a few hours. Now, they have been there for more than a month. “Largely ignored,” he said sadly.
“It is apparent that we have a real serious issue, that the life of the mind has been in decline for some time now,” he said. He dismissed concerns about health care as he began smoking another cigar. “Ignorance and indolence is the primary problem. If you take care of the mind, everything else follows.”
September 14, 2010
In Bookstore’s End, No Joy for Sidewalk Seller
By JENNIFER MEDINA
Charles Mysak does not see himself as an island, entire of himself. He is a part of this city, a part of the main.
And as he sets up his makeshift used-book shop along a patch of Columbus Avenue each day, he remembers the words of John Donne: “Any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.”
Nearly four centuries ago, Donne suggested that we each die a little when another human being goes. For Mr. Mysak, when another bookseller closes shop, it means that he, too, is a little closer to a literary death.
So he takes little pride in the fact that at the end of January, his little table stacked high with used books will have outlived the giant Barnes & Noble less than two blocks south, near Lincoln Center. For him, it is just another sign of decay.
“Here’s the terrible aspect of all this,” Mr. Mysak said one recent afternoon, pointing to a shuttered bar just up the avenue. “If a saloon and bookstore can’t make it on the Upper West Side, what better evidence do you need than that of the decline of artistic and free thought? If this is happening here, what must you see in the hinterlands of America?”
For more than a decade, beginning after Barnes & Noble opened its doors, Mr. Mysak has sold from his collection of hundreds of used books. Instead of shelves, he uses a rickety old folding table, which he sets up south of 68th Street, along with some plastic crates and well-worn cardboard boxes. The prices are penciled inside the book covers, generally no more than $5, save for some classic out-of-print hardbacks.
Business is good enough to keep him coming back each morning around 7 to unload his car, a dark-green Honda Civic (held together by duct tape in a few spots), where he keeps his entire inventory. But for almost as long as he has been in business, he said, his take-home earnings have gotten smaller and smaller. These days, he is satisfied if he grosses more than $100 in a 12-hour day.
“Is it a living?” he asks, his mischievous grin spreading across his lips. “Don’t ask my wife that question.”
It almost does not seem to matter to Mr. Mysak, 59, of Wayne, N.J., who can be evangelical in his belief that “in this three-by-eight stand is the answer to every human question.”
In some ways, Mr. Mysak is an unlikely bookish hero — he was disbarred as a lawyer in New Jersey and was convicted of pilfering money from clients. But as he peers through his Coke-bottle glasses and alternately puffs and chomps on a stumpy cigar, he speaks in paragraphs and elliptical sentences that betray his voracious reading habits. (He returns to his favorites — H. L. Mencken and Raymond Chandler — several times each year.)
“There are days when 15 or 20 people pass by and might not even notice I’m here,” he said, as several pedestrians seemed to do just that. “A decade ago, if you saw someone covering their ear and talking to themselves, you would have thought they were just nuts. Today that’s the norm. It’s as if they are totally consumed by their own world and have no room for the outside. It is complete immersion in self to the exclusion of all else. That has to have an impact on the rest of our lives.”
So he does not see the downfall of Barnes & Noble — where he occasionally goes to warm up and use the restroom — or the decline of his own sales as some kind of business failing. It is, he laments, a reflection of society. The nearby Apple store, he notes, has no problem attracting customers, who walk out with slick white bags holding small devices with large price tags.
“People walk out of there as if they are in ecstasy,” he said.
He points to a row of books that include editions by Aldous Huxley, E. B. White and Ansel Adams. A decade ago, he said, those books would not have stayed on his table for more than a few hours. Now, they have been there for more than a month. “Largely ignored,” he said sadly.
“It is apparent that we have a real serious issue, that the life of the mind has been in decline for some time now,” he said. He dismissed concerns about health care as he began smoking another cigar. “Ignorance and indolence is the primary problem. If you take care of the mind, everything else follows.”
Tuesday, September 14, 2010
The New York Times
September 13, 2010
3-D Printing Spurs a Manufacturing Revolution
By ASHLEE VANCE
SAN FRANCISCO — Businesses in the South Park district of San Francisco generally sell either Web technology or sandwiches and burritos. Bespoke Innovations plans to sell designer body parts.
The company is using advances in a technology known as 3-D printing to create prosthetic limb casings wrapped in embroidered leather, shimmering metal or whatever else someone might want.
Scott Summit, a co-founder of Bespoke, and his partner, an orthopedic surgeon, are set to open a studio this fall where they will sell the limb coverings and experiment with printing entire customized limbs that could cost a tenth of comparable artificial limbs made using traditional methods. And they will be dishwasher-safe, too.
“I wanted to create a leg that had a level of humanity,” Mr. Summit said. “It’s unfortunate that people have had a product that’s such a major part of their lives that was so underdesigned.”
A 3-D printer, which has nothing to do with paper printers, creates an object by stacking one layer of material — typically plastic or metal — on top of another, much the same way a pastry chef makes baklava with sheets of phyllo dough.
The technology has been radically transformed from its origins as a tool used by manufacturers and designers to build prototypes.
These days it is giving rise to a string of never-before-possible businesses that are selling iPhone cases, lamps, doorknobs, jewelry, handbags, perfume bottles, clothing and architectural models. And while some wonder how successfully the technology will make the transition from manufacturing applications to producing consumer goods, its use is exploding.
A California start-up is even working on building houses. Its printer, which would fit on a tractor-trailer, would use patterns delivered by computer, squirt out layers of special concrete and build entire walls that could be connected to form the basis of a house.
It is manufacturing with a mouse click instead of hammers, nails and, well, workers. Advocates of the technology say that by doing away with manual labor, 3-D printing could revamp the economics of manufacturing and revive American industry as creativity and ingenuity replace labor costs as the main concern around a variety of goods.
“There is nothing to be gained by going overseas except for higher shipping charges,” Mr. Summit said.
A wealth of design software programs, from free applications to the more sophisticated offerings of companies including Alibre and Autodesk, allows a person to concoct a product at home, then send the design to a company like Shapeways, which will print it and mail it back.
“We are enabling a class of ordinary people to take their ideas and turn those into physical, real products,” said J. Paul Grayson, Alibre’s chief executive. Mr. Grayson said his customers had designed parts for antique cars, yo-yos and even pieces for DNA analysis machines.
“We have a lot of individuals going from personal to commercial,” Mr. Grayson said.
Manufacturers and designers have used 3-D printing technology for years, experimenting on the spot rather than sending off designs to be built elsewhere, usually in Asia, and then waiting for a model to return. Boeing, for example, might use the technique to make and test air-duct shapes before committing to a final design.
Depending on the type of job at hand, a typical 3-D printer can cost from $10,000 to more than $100,000. Stratasys and 3D Systems are among the industry leaders. And MakerBot Industries sells a hobbyist kit for under $1,000.
Moving the technology beyond manufacturing does pose challenges. Customized products, for example, may be more expensive than mass-produced ones, and take longer to make. And the concept may seem out of place in a world trained to appreciate the merits of mass consumption.
But as 3-D printing machines have improved and fallen in cost along with the materials used to make products, new businesses have cropped up.
Freedom of Creation, based in Amsterdam, designs and prints exotic furniture and other fixtures for hotels and restaurants. It also makes iPhone cases for Apple, eye cream bottles for L’Oreal and jewelry and handbags for sale on its Web site.
Various designers have turned to the company for clothing that interlaces plastic to create form-hugging blouses, while others have requested spiky coverings for lights that look as if they could be the offspring of a sea urchin and a lamp shade.
“The aim was always to bring this to consumers instead of keeping it a secret at NASA and big manufacturers,” said Janne Kyttanen, 36, who founded Freedom of Creation about 10 years ago. “Everyone thought I was a lunatic when we started.”
His company can take risks with “out there” designs since it doesn’t need to print an object until it is ordered, Mr. Kyttanen said. Ikea can worry about mass appeal.
LGM, based in Minturn, Colo., uses a 3-D printing machine to create models of buildings and resorts for architectural firms.
“We used to take two months to build $100,000 models,” said Charles Overy, the founder of LGM. “Well, that type of work is gone because developers aren’t putting up that type of money anymore.”
Now, he said, he is building $2,000 models using an architect’s design and homegrown software for a 3-D printer. He can turn around a model in one night.
Next, the company plans to design and print doorknobs and other fixtures for buildings, creating unique items. “We are moving from handcraft to digital craft,” Mr. Overy said.
But Contour Crafting, based in Los Angeles, has pushed 3-D printing technology to its limits.
Based on research done by Dr. Behrokh Khoshnevis, an engineering professor at the University of Southern California, Contour Crafting has created a giant 3-D printing device for building houses. The start-up company is seeking money to commercialize a machine capable of building an entire house in one go using a machine that fits on the back of a tractor-trailer.
The 3-D printing wave has caught the attention of some of the world’s biggest technology companies. Hewlett-Packard, the largest paper-printer maker, has started reselling 3-D printing machines made by Stratasys. And Google uses the CADspan software from LGM to help people using its SketchUp design software turn their creations into 3-D printable objects.
At Bespoke, Mr. Summit has built a scanning contraption to examine limbs using a camera. After the scan, a detailed image is transmitted to a computer, and Mr. Summit can begin sculpting his limb art.
He uses a 3-D printer to create plastic shells that fit around the prosthetic limbs, and then wraps the shells in any flexible material the customer desires, be it an old bomber jacket or a trusty boot.
“We can do a midcentury modern or a Harley aesthetic if that’s what someone wants,” Mr. Summit said. “If we can get to flexible wood, I am totally going to cut my own leg off.”
Mr. Summit and his partner, Kenneth B. Trauner, the orthopedic surgeon, have built some test models of full legs that have sophisticated features like body symmetry, locking knees and flexing ankles. One artistic design is metal-plated in some areas and leather-wrapped in others.
“It costs $5,000 to $6,000 to print one of these legs, and it has features that aren’t even found in legs that cost $60,000 today,” Mr. Summit said.
“We want the people to have input and pick out their options,” he added. “It’s about going from the Model T to something like a Mini that has 10 million permutations.”
September 13, 2010
3-D Printing Spurs a Manufacturing Revolution
By ASHLEE VANCE
SAN FRANCISCO — Businesses in the South Park district of San Francisco generally sell either Web technology or sandwiches and burritos. Bespoke Innovations plans to sell designer body parts.
The company is using advances in a technology known as 3-D printing to create prosthetic limb casings wrapped in embroidered leather, shimmering metal or whatever else someone might want.
Scott Summit, a co-founder of Bespoke, and his partner, an orthopedic surgeon, are set to open a studio this fall where they will sell the limb coverings and experiment with printing entire customized limbs that could cost a tenth of comparable artificial limbs made using traditional methods. And they will be dishwasher-safe, too.
“I wanted to create a leg that had a level of humanity,” Mr. Summit said. “It’s unfortunate that people have had a product that’s such a major part of their lives that was so underdesigned.”
A 3-D printer, which has nothing to do with paper printers, creates an object by stacking one layer of material — typically plastic or metal — on top of another, much the same way a pastry chef makes baklava with sheets of phyllo dough.
The technology has been radically transformed from its origins as a tool used by manufacturers and designers to build prototypes.
These days it is giving rise to a string of never-before-possible businesses that are selling iPhone cases, lamps, doorknobs, jewelry, handbags, perfume bottles, clothing and architectural models. And while some wonder how successfully the technology will make the transition from manufacturing applications to producing consumer goods, its use is exploding.
A California start-up is even working on building houses. Its printer, which would fit on a tractor-trailer, would use patterns delivered by computer, squirt out layers of special concrete and build entire walls that could be connected to form the basis of a house.
It is manufacturing with a mouse click instead of hammers, nails and, well, workers. Advocates of the technology say that by doing away with manual labor, 3-D printing could revamp the economics of manufacturing and revive American industry as creativity and ingenuity replace labor costs as the main concern around a variety of goods.
“There is nothing to be gained by going overseas except for higher shipping charges,” Mr. Summit said.
A wealth of design software programs, from free applications to the more sophisticated offerings of companies including Alibre and Autodesk, allows a person to concoct a product at home, then send the design to a company like Shapeways, which will print it and mail it back.
“We are enabling a class of ordinary people to take their ideas and turn those into physical, real products,” said J. Paul Grayson, Alibre’s chief executive. Mr. Grayson said his customers had designed parts for antique cars, yo-yos and even pieces for DNA analysis machines.
“We have a lot of individuals going from personal to commercial,” Mr. Grayson said.
Manufacturers and designers have used 3-D printing technology for years, experimenting on the spot rather than sending off designs to be built elsewhere, usually in Asia, and then waiting for a model to return. Boeing, for example, might use the technique to make and test air-duct shapes before committing to a final design.
Depending on the type of job at hand, a typical 3-D printer can cost from $10,000 to more than $100,000. Stratasys and 3D Systems are among the industry leaders. And MakerBot Industries sells a hobbyist kit for under $1,000.
Moving the technology beyond manufacturing does pose challenges. Customized products, for example, may be more expensive than mass-produced ones, and take longer to make. And the concept may seem out of place in a world trained to appreciate the merits of mass consumption.
But as 3-D printing machines have improved and fallen in cost along with the materials used to make products, new businesses have cropped up.
Freedom of Creation, based in Amsterdam, designs and prints exotic furniture and other fixtures for hotels and restaurants. It also makes iPhone cases for Apple, eye cream bottles for L’Oreal and jewelry and handbags for sale on its Web site.
Various designers have turned to the company for clothing that interlaces plastic to create form-hugging blouses, while others have requested spiky coverings for lights that look as if they could be the offspring of a sea urchin and a lamp shade.
“The aim was always to bring this to consumers instead of keeping it a secret at NASA and big manufacturers,” said Janne Kyttanen, 36, who founded Freedom of Creation about 10 years ago. “Everyone thought I was a lunatic when we started.”
His company can take risks with “out there” designs since it doesn’t need to print an object until it is ordered, Mr. Kyttanen said. Ikea can worry about mass appeal.
LGM, based in Minturn, Colo., uses a 3-D printing machine to create models of buildings and resorts for architectural firms.
“We used to take two months to build $100,000 models,” said Charles Overy, the founder of LGM. “Well, that type of work is gone because developers aren’t putting up that type of money anymore.”
Now, he said, he is building $2,000 models using an architect’s design and homegrown software for a 3-D printer. He can turn around a model in one night.
Next, the company plans to design and print doorknobs and other fixtures for buildings, creating unique items. “We are moving from handcraft to digital craft,” Mr. Overy said.
But Contour Crafting, based in Los Angeles, has pushed 3-D printing technology to its limits.
Based on research done by Dr. Behrokh Khoshnevis, an engineering professor at the University of Southern California, Contour Crafting has created a giant 3-D printing device for building houses. The start-up company is seeking money to commercialize a machine capable of building an entire house in one go using a machine that fits on the back of a tractor-trailer.
The 3-D printing wave has caught the attention of some of the world’s biggest technology companies. Hewlett-Packard, the largest paper-printer maker, has started reselling 3-D printing machines made by Stratasys. And Google uses the CADspan software from LGM to help people using its SketchUp design software turn their creations into 3-D printable objects.
At Bespoke, Mr. Summit has built a scanning contraption to examine limbs using a camera. After the scan, a detailed image is transmitted to a computer, and Mr. Summit can begin sculpting his limb art.
He uses a 3-D printer to create plastic shells that fit around the prosthetic limbs, and then wraps the shells in any flexible material the customer desires, be it an old bomber jacket or a trusty boot.
“We can do a midcentury modern or a Harley aesthetic if that’s what someone wants,” Mr. Summit said. “If we can get to flexible wood, I am totally going to cut my own leg off.”
Mr. Summit and his partner, Kenneth B. Trauner, the orthopedic surgeon, have built some test models of full legs that have sophisticated features like body symmetry, locking knees and flexing ankles. One artistic design is metal-plated in some areas and leather-wrapped in others.
“It costs $5,000 to $6,000 to print one of these legs, and it has features that aren’t even found in legs that cost $60,000 today,” Mr. Summit said.
“We want the people to have input and pick out their options,” he added. “It’s about going from the Model T to something like a Mini that has 10 million permutations.”
Friday, September 10, 2010
September 8, 2010, 12:45 pm
Sweating Your Way to Success
By PETER ORSZAG
NYT
‘chunking’, chess, effort, success
The most important book I’ve read over the past six months is Matthew Syed’s “Bounce.” Teddy Roosevelt once said that “in this life we get nothing save by effort.” Syed shows how trenchant Roosevelt was.
Syed is a two-time Olympian in table tennis. His book is impressive for two reasons. First, he takes empirical evidence on the science of success seriously (and in the areas where I know the literature to some degree, his depiction is quite accurate). Second, he shows how that evidence shatters widespread myths about what leads to better performance in any complex undertaking (including, for example, chess, tennis and math).
Basically, we’ve bought into several misconceptions about excellence, which are not only wrong but affirmatively counterproductive.
Let me focus today on the core one. Too many of us believe in the “talent” myth — that top performers are born, rather than built. But Syed shows that in almost every arena in which tasks are complex, top performers excel not because of innate ability but because of dedicated practice.
In effect, the stars among us have practiced so much that they are better at what psychologists call “chunking.” Imagine trying to remember 41 letters or numbers. Most of us couldn’t come close to doing that. Now imagine trying to remember a sentence with 47 letters or numbers, like: “Imagine trying to remember 41 letters or numbers.” Most of us can do that with little difficulty, because we are chunking the letters and numbers. We remember the words, and we know the letters in each word.
Syed shows that most better performers have practiced so intensely that they chunk better at their tasks than normal people. So we see impressive performance and think someone is naturally skilled, whereas the reality is that person has simply practiced for longer and more intensely than others.
Perhaps the most dramatic example is from chess. A 1973 study took one group of chess masters and another group of novices. When presented with chess pieces as they would be arranged in a chess game, the masters were stunningly better than the novices at recalling each piece’s position.
But here’s the catch: when the pieces were set up randomly, in a manner that would never occur in a real game of chess, the masters were no better than novices at remembering where the pieces were. So much for chess masters being born with special powers of memory or concentration. Instead, the explanation is that they’ve played so many games of chess that they are more adept at recognizing patterns on the chess board (at least, when those patterns could arise in a game of chess).
Success in most arenas of life is thus not a reflection of innate skill but rather devoted effort. And Syed demonstrates why it is not just effort, but purposeful effort that is key — if you’re going to get better at chunking, you can’t just go through the motions and punch time on the clock. You need to put your heart into it. More on that later this week.
Sweating Your Way to Success
By PETER ORSZAG
NYT
‘chunking’, chess, effort, success
The most important book I’ve read over the past six months is Matthew Syed’s “Bounce.” Teddy Roosevelt once said that “in this life we get nothing save by effort.” Syed shows how trenchant Roosevelt was.
Syed is a two-time Olympian in table tennis. His book is impressive for two reasons. First, he takes empirical evidence on the science of success seriously (and in the areas where I know the literature to some degree, his depiction is quite accurate). Second, he shows how that evidence shatters widespread myths about what leads to better performance in any complex undertaking (including, for example, chess, tennis and math).
Basically, we’ve bought into several misconceptions about excellence, which are not only wrong but affirmatively counterproductive.
Let me focus today on the core one. Too many of us believe in the “talent” myth — that top performers are born, rather than built. But Syed shows that in almost every arena in which tasks are complex, top performers excel not because of innate ability but because of dedicated practice.
In effect, the stars among us have practiced so much that they are better at what psychologists call “chunking.” Imagine trying to remember 41 letters or numbers. Most of us couldn’t come close to doing that. Now imagine trying to remember a sentence with 47 letters or numbers, like: “Imagine trying to remember 41 letters or numbers.” Most of us can do that with little difficulty, because we are chunking the letters and numbers. We remember the words, and we know the letters in each word.
Syed shows that most better performers have practiced so intensely that they chunk better at their tasks than normal people. So we see impressive performance and think someone is naturally skilled, whereas the reality is that person has simply practiced for longer and more intensely than others.
Perhaps the most dramatic example is from chess. A 1973 study took one group of chess masters and another group of novices. When presented with chess pieces as they would be arranged in a chess game, the masters were stunningly better than the novices at recalling each piece’s position.
But here’s the catch: when the pieces were set up randomly, in a manner that would never occur in a real game of chess, the masters were no better than novices at remembering where the pieces were. So much for chess masters being born with special powers of memory or concentration. Instead, the explanation is that they’ve played so many games of chess that they are more adept at recognizing patterns on the chess board (at least, when those patterns could arise in a game of chess).
Success in most arenas of life is thus not a reflection of innate skill but rather devoted effort. And Syed demonstrates why it is not just effort, but purposeful effort that is key — if you’re going to get better at chunking, you can’t just go through the motions and punch time on the clock. You need to put your heart into it. More on that later this week.
Tuesday, September 07, 2010
The New York Times
September 6, 2010
Forget What You Know About Good Study Habits
By BENEDICT CAREY
Every September, millions of parents try a kind of psychological witchcraft, to transform their summer-glazed campers into fall students, their video-bugs into bookworms. Advice is cheap and all too familiar: Clear a quiet work space. Stick to a homework schedule. Set goals. Set boundaries. Do not bribe (except in emergencies).
And check out the classroom. Does Junior’s learning style match the new teacher’s approach? Or the school’s philosophy? Maybe the child isn’t “a good fit” for the school.
Such theories have developed in part because of sketchy education research that doesn’t offer clear guidance. Student traits and teaching styles surely interact; so do personalities and at-home rules. The trouble is, no one can predict how.
Yet there are effective approaches to learning, at least for those who are motivated. In recent years, cognitive scientists have shown that a few simple techniques can reliably improve what matters most: how much a student learns from studying.
The findings can help anyone, from a fourth grader doing long division to a retiree taking on a new language. But they directly contradict much of the common wisdom about good study habits, and they have not caught on.
For instance, instead of sticking to one study location, simply alternating the room where a person studies improves retention. So does studying distinct but related skills or concepts in one sitting, rather than focusing intensely on a single thing.
“We have known these principles for some time, and it’s intriguing that schools don’t pick them up, or that people don’t learn them by trial and error,” said Robert A. Bjork, a psychologist at the University of California, Los Angeles. “Instead, we walk around with all sorts of unexamined beliefs about what works that are mistaken.”
Take the notion that children have specific learning styles, that some are “visual learners” and others are auditory; some are “left-brain” students, others “right-brain.” In a recent review of the relevant research, published in the journal Psychological Science in the Public Interest, a team of psychologists found almost zero support for such ideas. “The contrast between the enormous popularity of the learning-styles approach within education and the lack of credible evidence for its utility is, in our opinion, striking and disturbing,” the researchers concluded.
Ditto for teaching styles, researchers say. Some excellent instructors caper in front of the blackboard like summer-theater Falstaffs; others are reserved to the point of shyness. “We have yet to identify the common threads between teachers who create a constructive learning atmosphere,” said Daniel T. Willingham, a psychologist at the University of Virginia and author of the book “Why Don’t Students Like School?”
But individual learning is another matter, and psychologists have discovered that some of the most hallowed advice on study habits is flat wrong. For instance, many study skills courses insist that students find a specific place, a study room or a quiet corner of the library, to take their work. The research finds just the opposite. In one classic 1978 experiment, psychologists found that college students who studied a list of 40 vocabulary words in two different rooms — one windowless and cluttered, the other modern, with a view on a courtyard — did far better on a test than students who studied the words twice, in the same room. Later studies have confirmed the finding, for a variety of topics.
The brain makes subtle associations between what it is studying and the background sensations it has at the time, the authors say, regardless of whether those perceptions are conscious. It colors the terms of the Versailles Treaty with the wasted fluorescent glow of the dorm study room, say; or the elements of the Marshall Plan with the jade-curtain shade of the willow tree in the backyard. Forcing the brain to make multiple associations with the same material may, in effect, give that information more neural scaffolding.
“What we think is happening here is that, when the outside context is varied, the information is enriched, and this slows down forgetting,” said Dr. Bjork, the senior author of the two-room experiment.
Varying the type of material studied in a single sitting — alternating, for example, among vocabulary, reading and speaking in a new language — seems to leave a deeper impression on the brain than does concentrating on just one skill at a time. Musicians have known this for years, and their practice sessions often include a mix of scales, musical pieces and rhythmic work. Many athletes, too, routinely mix their workouts with strength, speed and skill drills.
The advantages of this approach to studying can be striking, in some topic areas. In a study recently posted online by the journal Applied Cognitive Psychology, Doug Rohrer and Kelli Taylor of the University of South Florida taught a group of fourth graders four equations, each to calculate a different dimension of a prism. Half of the children learned by studying repeated examples of one equation, say, calculating the number of prism faces when given the number of sides at the base, then moving on to the next type of calculation, studying repeated examples of that. The other half studied mixed problem sets, which included examples all four types of calculations grouped together. Both groups solved sample problems along the way, as they studied.
A day later, the researchers gave all of the students a test on the material, presenting new problems of the same type. The children who had studied mixed sets did twice as well as the others, outscoring them 77 percent to 38 percent. The researchers have found the same in experiments involving adults and younger children.
“When students see a list of problems, all of the same kind, they know the strategy to use before they even read the problem,” said Dr. Rohrer. “That’s like riding a bike with training wheels.” With mixed practice, he added, “each problem is different from the last one, which means kids must learn how to choose the appropriate procedure — just like they had to do on the test.”
These findings extend well beyond math, even to aesthetic intuitive learning. In an experiment published last month in the journal Psychology and Aging, researchers found that college students and adults of retirement age were better able to distinguish the painting styles of 12 unfamiliar artists after viewing mixed collections (assortments, including works from all 12) than after viewing a dozen works from one artist, all together, then moving on to the next painter.
The finding undermines the common assumption that intensive immersion is the best way to really master a particular genre, or type of creative work, said Nate Kornell, a psychologist at Williams College and the lead author of the study. “What seems to be happening in this case is that the brain is picking up deeper patterns when seeing assortments of paintings; it’s picking up what’s similar and what’s different about them,” often subconsciously.
Cognitive scientists do not deny that honest-to-goodness cramming can lead to a better grade on a given exam. But hurriedly jam-packing a brain is akin to speed-packing a cheap suitcase, as most students quickly learn — it holds its new load for a while, then most everything falls out.
“With many students, it’s not like they can’t remember the material” when they move to a more advanced class, said Henry L. Roediger III, a psychologist at Washington University in St. Louis. “It’s like they’ve never seen it before.”
When the neural suitcase is packed carefully and gradually, it holds its contents for far, far longer. An hour of study tonight, an hour on the weekend, another session a week from now: such so-called spacing improves later recall, without requiring students to put in more overall study effort or pay more attention, dozens of studies have found.
No one knows for sure why. It may be that the brain, when it revisits material at a later time, has to relearn some of what it has absorbed before adding new stuff — and that that process is itself self-reinforcing.
“The idea is that forgetting is the friend of learning,” said Dr. Kornell. “When you forget something, it allows you to relearn, and do so effectively, the next time you see it.”
That’s one reason cognitive scientists see testing itself — or practice tests and quizzes — as a powerful tool of learning, rather than merely assessment. The process of retrieving an idea is not like pulling a book from a shelf; it seems to fundamentally alter the way the information is subsequently stored, making it far more accessible in the future.
Dr. Roediger uses the analogy of the Heisenberg uncertainty principle in physics, which holds that the act of measuring a property of a particle alters that property: “Testing not only measures knowledge but changes it,” he says — and, happily, in the direction of more certainty, not less.
In one of his own experiments, Dr. Roediger and Jeffrey Karpicke, also of Washington University, had college students study science passages from a reading comprehension test, in short study periods. When students studied the same material twice, in back-to-back sessions, they did very well on a test given immediately afterward, then began to forget the material.
But if they studied the passage just once and did a practice test in the second session, they did very well on one test two days later, and another given a week later.
“Testing has such bad connotation; people think of standardized testing or teaching to the test,” Dr. Roediger said. “Maybe we need to call it something else, but this is one of the most powerful learning tools we have.”
Of course, one reason the thought of testing tightens people’s stomachs is that tests are so often hard. Paradoxically, it is just this difficulty that makes them such effective study tools, research suggests. The harder it is to remember something, the harder it is to later forget. This effect, which researchers call “desirable difficulty,” is evident in daily life. The name of the actor who played Linc in “The Mod Squad”? Francie’s brother in “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn”? The name of the co-discoverer, with Newton, of calculus?
The more mental sweat it takes to dig it out, the more securely it will be subsequently anchored.
None of which is to suggest that these techniques — alternating study environments, mixing content, spacing study sessions, self-testing or all the above — will turn a grade-A slacker into a grade-A student. Motivation matters. So do impressing friends, making the hockey team and finding the nerve to text the cute student in social studies.
“In lab experiments, you’re able to control for all factors except the one you’re studying,” said Dr. Willingham. “Not true in the classroom, in real life. All of these things are interacting at the same time.”
But at the very least, the cognitive techniques give parents and students, young and old, something many did not have before: a study plan based on evidence, not schoolyard folk wisdom, or empty theorizing.
September 6, 2010
Forget What You Know About Good Study Habits
By BENEDICT CAREY
Every September, millions of parents try a kind of psychological witchcraft, to transform their summer-glazed campers into fall students, their video-bugs into bookworms. Advice is cheap and all too familiar: Clear a quiet work space. Stick to a homework schedule. Set goals. Set boundaries. Do not bribe (except in emergencies).
And check out the classroom. Does Junior’s learning style match the new teacher’s approach? Or the school’s philosophy? Maybe the child isn’t “a good fit” for the school.
Such theories have developed in part because of sketchy education research that doesn’t offer clear guidance. Student traits and teaching styles surely interact; so do personalities and at-home rules. The trouble is, no one can predict how.
Yet there are effective approaches to learning, at least for those who are motivated. In recent years, cognitive scientists have shown that a few simple techniques can reliably improve what matters most: how much a student learns from studying.
The findings can help anyone, from a fourth grader doing long division to a retiree taking on a new language. But they directly contradict much of the common wisdom about good study habits, and they have not caught on.
For instance, instead of sticking to one study location, simply alternating the room where a person studies improves retention. So does studying distinct but related skills or concepts in one sitting, rather than focusing intensely on a single thing.
“We have known these principles for some time, and it’s intriguing that schools don’t pick them up, or that people don’t learn them by trial and error,” said Robert A. Bjork, a psychologist at the University of California, Los Angeles. “Instead, we walk around with all sorts of unexamined beliefs about what works that are mistaken.”
Take the notion that children have specific learning styles, that some are “visual learners” and others are auditory; some are “left-brain” students, others “right-brain.” In a recent review of the relevant research, published in the journal Psychological Science in the Public Interest, a team of psychologists found almost zero support for such ideas. “The contrast between the enormous popularity of the learning-styles approach within education and the lack of credible evidence for its utility is, in our opinion, striking and disturbing,” the researchers concluded.
Ditto for teaching styles, researchers say. Some excellent instructors caper in front of the blackboard like summer-theater Falstaffs; others are reserved to the point of shyness. “We have yet to identify the common threads between teachers who create a constructive learning atmosphere,” said Daniel T. Willingham, a psychologist at the University of Virginia and author of the book “Why Don’t Students Like School?”
But individual learning is another matter, and psychologists have discovered that some of the most hallowed advice on study habits is flat wrong. For instance, many study skills courses insist that students find a specific place, a study room or a quiet corner of the library, to take their work. The research finds just the opposite. In one classic 1978 experiment, psychologists found that college students who studied a list of 40 vocabulary words in two different rooms — one windowless and cluttered, the other modern, with a view on a courtyard — did far better on a test than students who studied the words twice, in the same room. Later studies have confirmed the finding, for a variety of topics.
The brain makes subtle associations between what it is studying and the background sensations it has at the time, the authors say, regardless of whether those perceptions are conscious. It colors the terms of the Versailles Treaty with the wasted fluorescent glow of the dorm study room, say; or the elements of the Marshall Plan with the jade-curtain shade of the willow tree in the backyard. Forcing the brain to make multiple associations with the same material may, in effect, give that information more neural scaffolding.
“What we think is happening here is that, when the outside context is varied, the information is enriched, and this slows down forgetting,” said Dr. Bjork, the senior author of the two-room experiment.
Varying the type of material studied in a single sitting — alternating, for example, among vocabulary, reading and speaking in a new language — seems to leave a deeper impression on the brain than does concentrating on just one skill at a time. Musicians have known this for years, and their practice sessions often include a mix of scales, musical pieces and rhythmic work. Many athletes, too, routinely mix their workouts with strength, speed and skill drills.
The advantages of this approach to studying can be striking, in some topic areas. In a study recently posted online by the journal Applied Cognitive Psychology, Doug Rohrer and Kelli Taylor of the University of South Florida taught a group of fourth graders four equations, each to calculate a different dimension of a prism. Half of the children learned by studying repeated examples of one equation, say, calculating the number of prism faces when given the number of sides at the base, then moving on to the next type of calculation, studying repeated examples of that. The other half studied mixed problem sets, which included examples all four types of calculations grouped together. Both groups solved sample problems along the way, as they studied.
A day later, the researchers gave all of the students a test on the material, presenting new problems of the same type. The children who had studied mixed sets did twice as well as the others, outscoring them 77 percent to 38 percent. The researchers have found the same in experiments involving adults and younger children.
“When students see a list of problems, all of the same kind, they know the strategy to use before they even read the problem,” said Dr. Rohrer. “That’s like riding a bike with training wheels.” With mixed practice, he added, “each problem is different from the last one, which means kids must learn how to choose the appropriate procedure — just like they had to do on the test.”
These findings extend well beyond math, even to aesthetic intuitive learning. In an experiment published last month in the journal Psychology and Aging, researchers found that college students and adults of retirement age were better able to distinguish the painting styles of 12 unfamiliar artists after viewing mixed collections (assortments, including works from all 12) than after viewing a dozen works from one artist, all together, then moving on to the next painter.
The finding undermines the common assumption that intensive immersion is the best way to really master a particular genre, or type of creative work, said Nate Kornell, a psychologist at Williams College and the lead author of the study. “What seems to be happening in this case is that the brain is picking up deeper patterns when seeing assortments of paintings; it’s picking up what’s similar and what’s different about them,” often subconsciously.
Cognitive scientists do not deny that honest-to-goodness cramming can lead to a better grade on a given exam. But hurriedly jam-packing a brain is akin to speed-packing a cheap suitcase, as most students quickly learn — it holds its new load for a while, then most everything falls out.
“With many students, it’s not like they can’t remember the material” when they move to a more advanced class, said Henry L. Roediger III, a psychologist at Washington University in St. Louis. “It’s like they’ve never seen it before.”
When the neural suitcase is packed carefully and gradually, it holds its contents for far, far longer. An hour of study tonight, an hour on the weekend, another session a week from now: such so-called spacing improves later recall, without requiring students to put in more overall study effort or pay more attention, dozens of studies have found.
No one knows for sure why. It may be that the brain, when it revisits material at a later time, has to relearn some of what it has absorbed before adding new stuff — and that that process is itself self-reinforcing.
“The idea is that forgetting is the friend of learning,” said Dr. Kornell. “When you forget something, it allows you to relearn, and do so effectively, the next time you see it.”
That’s one reason cognitive scientists see testing itself — or practice tests and quizzes — as a powerful tool of learning, rather than merely assessment. The process of retrieving an idea is not like pulling a book from a shelf; it seems to fundamentally alter the way the information is subsequently stored, making it far more accessible in the future.
Dr. Roediger uses the analogy of the Heisenberg uncertainty principle in physics, which holds that the act of measuring a property of a particle alters that property: “Testing not only measures knowledge but changes it,” he says — and, happily, in the direction of more certainty, not less.
In one of his own experiments, Dr. Roediger and Jeffrey Karpicke, also of Washington University, had college students study science passages from a reading comprehension test, in short study periods. When students studied the same material twice, in back-to-back sessions, they did very well on a test given immediately afterward, then began to forget the material.
But if they studied the passage just once and did a practice test in the second session, they did very well on one test two days later, and another given a week later.
“Testing has such bad connotation; people think of standardized testing or teaching to the test,” Dr. Roediger said. “Maybe we need to call it something else, but this is one of the most powerful learning tools we have.”
Of course, one reason the thought of testing tightens people’s stomachs is that tests are so often hard. Paradoxically, it is just this difficulty that makes them such effective study tools, research suggests. The harder it is to remember something, the harder it is to later forget. This effect, which researchers call “desirable difficulty,” is evident in daily life. The name of the actor who played Linc in “The Mod Squad”? Francie’s brother in “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn”? The name of the co-discoverer, with Newton, of calculus?
The more mental sweat it takes to dig it out, the more securely it will be subsequently anchored.
None of which is to suggest that these techniques — alternating study environments, mixing content, spacing study sessions, self-testing or all the above — will turn a grade-A slacker into a grade-A student. Motivation matters. So do impressing friends, making the hockey team and finding the nerve to text the cute student in social studies.
“In lab experiments, you’re able to control for all factors except the one you’re studying,” said Dr. Willingham. “Not true in the classroom, in real life. All of these things are interacting at the same time.”
But at the very least, the cognitive techniques give parents and students, young and old, something many did not have before: a study plan based on evidence, not schoolyard folk wisdom, or empty theorizing.
Monday, September 06, 2010
Scott Adams
http://dilbert.com/blog/entry/the_illusion_of_winning/
The Illusion of Winning
Aug 30, 2010 General Nonsense | Notify
Let's say that you and I decide to play pool. We agree to play eight-ball, best of five games. Our perception is that what follows is a contest to see who will do something called winning.
But I don't see it that way. I always imagine the outcome of eight-ball to be predetermined, to about 95% certainty, based on who has practiced that specific skill the most over his lifetime. The remaining 5% is mostly luck, and playing a best of five series eliminates most of the luck too.
I've spent a ridiculous number of hours playing pool, mostly as a kid. I'm not proud of that fact. Almost any other activity would have been more useful. As a result of my wasted youth, years later I can beat 99% of the public at eight-ball. But I can't enjoy that sort of so-called victory. It doesn't feel like "winning" anything.
It feels as meaningful as if my opponent and I had kept logs of the hours we each had spent playing pool over our lifetimes and simply compared. It feels redundant to play the actual games.
I see the same thing with tennis, golf, music, and just about any other skill, at least at non-professional levels. And research supports the obvious, that practice is the main determinant of success in a particular field.
As a practical matter, you can't keep logs of all the hours you have spent practicing various skills. And I wonder how that affects our perception of what it takes to be a so-called winner. We focus on the contest instead of the practice because the contest is easy to measure and the practice is not.
Complicating our perceptions is professional sports. The whole point of professional athletics is assembling freaks of nature into teams and pitting them against other freaks of nature. Practice is obviously important in professional sports, but it won't make you taller. I suspect that professional sports demotivate viewers by sending the accidental message that success is determined by genetics.
My recommendation is to introduce eight-ball into school curricula, but in a specific way. Each kid would be required to keep a log of hours spent practicing on his own time, and there would be no minimum requirement. Some kids could practice zero hours if they had no interest or access to a pool table. At the end of the school year, the entire class would compete in a tournament, and they would compare their results with how many hours they spent practicing. I think that would make real the connection between practice and results, in a way that regular schoolwork and sports do not. That would teach them that winning happens before the game starts.
Yes, I know that schools will never assign eight-ball for homework. But maybe there is some kid-friendly way to teach the same lesson.
http://dilbert.com/blog/entry/the_illusion_of_winning/
The Illusion of Winning
Aug 30, 2010 General Nonsense | Notify
Let's say that you and I decide to play pool. We agree to play eight-ball, best of five games. Our perception is that what follows is a contest to see who will do something called winning.
But I don't see it that way. I always imagine the outcome of eight-ball to be predetermined, to about 95% certainty, based on who has practiced that specific skill the most over his lifetime. The remaining 5% is mostly luck, and playing a best of five series eliminates most of the luck too.
I've spent a ridiculous number of hours playing pool, mostly as a kid. I'm not proud of that fact. Almost any other activity would have been more useful. As a result of my wasted youth, years later I can beat 99% of the public at eight-ball. But I can't enjoy that sort of so-called victory. It doesn't feel like "winning" anything.
It feels as meaningful as if my opponent and I had kept logs of the hours we each had spent playing pool over our lifetimes and simply compared. It feels redundant to play the actual games.
I see the same thing with tennis, golf, music, and just about any other skill, at least at non-professional levels. And research supports the obvious, that practice is the main determinant of success in a particular field.
As a practical matter, you can't keep logs of all the hours you have spent practicing various skills. And I wonder how that affects our perception of what it takes to be a so-called winner. We focus on the contest instead of the practice because the contest is easy to measure and the practice is not.
Complicating our perceptions is professional sports. The whole point of professional athletics is assembling freaks of nature into teams and pitting them against other freaks of nature. Practice is obviously important in professional sports, but it won't make you taller. I suspect that professional sports demotivate viewers by sending the accidental message that success is determined by genetics.
My recommendation is to introduce eight-ball into school curricula, but in a specific way. Each kid would be required to keep a log of hours spent practicing on his own time, and there would be no minimum requirement. Some kids could practice zero hours if they had no interest or access to a pool table. At the end of the school year, the entire class would compete in a tournament, and they would compare their results with how many hours they spent practicing. I think that would make real the connection between practice and results, in a way that regular schoolwork and sports do not. That would teach them that winning happens before the game starts.
Yes, I know that schools will never assign eight-ball for homework. But maybe there is some kid-friendly way to teach the same lesson.
Friday, September 03, 2010
August 31, 2010, 9:00 pm
Mind the Grid
By ROBERT WRIGHT
NYT
Not that you asked, but my fingernails are longer than they’ve been in a while. I just spent a week off the grid — no World Wide Web, no e-mail, no cell phone, no landline — and at some point I seem to have quit biting my nails.
But before you get envious: in addition to unplugging from the wired world, I plugged into a regimen that isn’t everyone’s cup of tea. I was at a silent meditation retreat. My fellow yogis and I did about five hours of sitting meditation each day and five hours of walking meditation. Then each night we listened to a talk about the context of all this: the Buddhist worldview.
So I’ve failed to control my variables. Who knows how much of my newfound calm is due to escaping modern technology and how much is due to immersing myself in an ancient discipline?
On the other hand, there’s an illuminating synergy between the two. A week of silent meditation can help highlight how technology keeps us in its grip, and what some of the costs of our ongoing surrender are.
Like many meditation retreats, this one emphasized “mindfulness,” which involves a calm focus on the present moment — much the kind of focus that is said to be endangered by the infinite regress of distractions and disruptions brought to us by digital technology. And this awareness of the moment includes awareness of your internal states; you’re supposed to carefully examine your thoughts, your feelings, your reactions. So when you come back from a retreat and plug your newly mindful mind into the grid, the subtle sources of the grid’s power seem more salient.
Take Paris Hilton, for example. When I fired up my computer to catch up on the news I’d missed, I saw a headline saying she’d been arrested for cocaine possession. I felt something urge me to click on the headline. I examined that something and found it to be a certain low-key delight in misfortunes that befall rich and famous people who seem (from afar, at least) really gross.
I’m happy to say that this schadenfreude wasn’t overwhelming, and I resisted the temptation to click — until I saw, right under the headline, “(video).” Thinking someone had captured her arrest with a cell phone camera, I felt a medium-sized desire to witness her humiliation. I wrestled with the desire. I lost. I clicked. What a sucker! It was just video of some news anchor’s report on the arrest. I felt annoyed, even cheated, by this misleading labeling. Grievance welled up within.
Maybe Buddha’s time off the grid gave him enough critical distance from certain emotions to discover his formula for liberation from them.
In the space of only a few minutes, the grid had sent a succession of emotions coursing through my body, none that I’m especially proud of. And I feel especially not proud of them right after a meditation retreat, which grants enough critical distance from your feelings to highlight their frequent pointlessness, if not absurdity.
Of course, the grid also stirs positive emotions, and I won’t here join the debate over whether the good it does outweighs the bad. My point is just how frequently and often subtly it activates our emotions, period. Next time you’re about to click on a headline, pause to see if there’s some feeling urging you on — outrage over a heinous crime; satisfaction that some culprit is being brought to justice; the tribalistic joy that leads you to read about a Yankees win or (if you’re a Mets fan) a Yankees loss; the alluring anticipation of vindication or reassurance when an op-ed seems likely to support your worldview; the well-founded trust that a columnist you dislike will say things that confirm his or her worthlessness.
E-mail, too, plays on your emotions. How often do you click on an e-mail without some degree — however small — of such feelings as tentative hope or eager anticipation, mild anxiety or even dread? And because your inbox is the portal to so much virtual human contact, it can exert a collective pull. Sometimes when I feel the urge to check in, and then realize I don’t have my iPhone, I have small but discernible feelings of loss or sorrow. (And my iPhone doesn’t even have a Facebook app!)
Of course, none of these emotions are modern inventions. It’s just that the grid messes with them on a whole new scale. Via e-mail, a brain designed for a small and intimate social environment enters a much bigger universe of people, whose sometimes consequential communication arrives unpredictably. And when we move from e-mail to the Web, we face a medium so vivid and interactive as to offer a tool of seduction with unprecedented power.
A particular problem for me is techno-lust. The Web makes it so easy to window shop! I won’t tell you how much time I’ve spent cyber-evaluating the Blackberry Torch and the Palm Pre (some of it on my iPhone). This research hasn’t yet resulted in a purchase, but it has ensured that ads for cell phones follow me all over the Web, and this in turn has triggered a broader research program that is now entering its penultimate phase: After considering several alternatives, I’ve again narrowed it down to the Blackberry Torch and the Palm Pre.
So there you go: covetousness, schadenfreude, anxiety, dread, and on and on. It’s the frequent fruitlessness of such feelings that the Buddha is said to have pondered after he unplugged from the social grid of his day — that is, the people he lived around — and wandered off to reckon with the human predicament. Maybe his time off the grid gave him enough critical distance from these emotions to discover his formula for liberation from them. In any event, it’s because the underlying emotions haven’t changed, and because the grid conveys and elicits them with such power, that his formula holds appeal for many people even, and perhaps especially, today.
Personally, I’m a fan of the formula, or at least of the version of it I’ve seen on modern American meditation retreats. If this column hasn’t featured lush praise for it, that’s partly because I’ve already written rapturously — a year ago, on this very Web site — about a previous retreat. But it’s also because I don’t want to oversell the program. The serenity tends to fade once you plug back into the grid. Sustaining even modest mindfulness in the modern world is a challenge.
But I’m working on it, trying to keep living in the moment. I meditated this morning. My fingernails remain impressive. And I’m totally over that Paris Hilton thing — it was just a momentary lapse.
Postscript: If you’re interested in the details: the retreat I attended was in Massachusetts, at the Insight Meditation Society, which teaches in the Vipassana tradition. (A prominent Vipassana retreat center on the West Coast is Spirit Rock.) The teachers at this particular retreat were Narayan Liebenson Grady and Michael Liebenson Grady of the Cambridge Insight Meditation Center. (I’m a little reluctant to disclose even these bare details, as there’s a kind of implied intimacy at these retreats that I wouldn’t want to violate, but since I’ve said virtually nothing about the retreat itself, my conscience is fairly clear.)
Mind the Grid
By ROBERT WRIGHT
NYT
Not that you asked, but my fingernails are longer than they’ve been in a while. I just spent a week off the grid — no World Wide Web, no e-mail, no cell phone, no landline — and at some point I seem to have quit biting my nails.
But before you get envious: in addition to unplugging from the wired world, I plugged into a regimen that isn’t everyone’s cup of tea. I was at a silent meditation retreat. My fellow yogis and I did about five hours of sitting meditation each day and five hours of walking meditation. Then each night we listened to a talk about the context of all this: the Buddhist worldview.
So I’ve failed to control my variables. Who knows how much of my newfound calm is due to escaping modern technology and how much is due to immersing myself in an ancient discipline?
On the other hand, there’s an illuminating synergy between the two. A week of silent meditation can help highlight how technology keeps us in its grip, and what some of the costs of our ongoing surrender are.
Like many meditation retreats, this one emphasized “mindfulness,” which involves a calm focus on the present moment — much the kind of focus that is said to be endangered by the infinite regress of distractions and disruptions brought to us by digital technology. And this awareness of the moment includes awareness of your internal states; you’re supposed to carefully examine your thoughts, your feelings, your reactions. So when you come back from a retreat and plug your newly mindful mind into the grid, the subtle sources of the grid’s power seem more salient.
Take Paris Hilton, for example. When I fired up my computer to catch up on the news I’d missed, I saw a headline saying she’d been arrested for cocaine possession. I felt something urge me to click on the headline. I examined that something and found it to be a certain low-key delight in misfortunes that befall rich and famous people who seem (from afar, at least) really gross.
I’m happy to say that this schadenfreude wasn’t overwhelming, and I resisted the temptation to click — until I saw, right under the headline, “(video).” Thinking someone had captured her arrest with a cell phone camera, I felt a medium-sized desire to witness her humiliation. I wrestled with the desire. I lost. I clicked. What a sucker! It was just video of some news anchor’s report on the arrest. I felt annoyed, even cheated, by this misleading labeling. Grievance welled up within.
Maybe Buddha’s time off the grid gave him enough critical distance from certain emotions to discover his formula for liberation from them.
In the space of only a few minutes, the grid had sent a succession of emotions coursing through my body, none that I’m especially proud of. And I feel especially not proud of them right after a meditation retreat, which grants enough critical distance from your feelings to highlight their frequent pointlessness, if not absurdity.
Of course, the grid also stirs positive emotions, and I won’t here join the debate over whether the good it does outweighs the bad. My point is just how frequently and often subtly it activates our emotions, period. Next time you’re about to click on a headline, pause to see if there’s some feeling urging you on — outrage over a heinous crime; satisfaction that some culprit is being brought to justice; the tribalistic joy that leads you to read about a Yankees win or (if you’re a Mets fan) a Yankees loss; the alluring anticipation of vindication or reassurance when an op-ed seems likely to support your worldview; the well-founded trust that a columnist you dislike will say things that confirm his or her worthlessness.
E-mail, too, plays on your emotions. How often do you click on an e-mail without some degree — however small — of such feelings as tentative hope or eager anticipation, mild anxiety or even dread? And because your inbox is the portal to so much virtual human contact, it can exert a collective pull. Sometimes when I feel the urge to check in, and then realize I don’t have my iPhone, I have small but discernible feelings of loss or sorrow. (And my iPhone doesn’t even have a Facebook app!)
Of course, none of these emotions are modern inventions. It’s just that the grid messes with them on a whole new scale. Via e-mail, a brain designed for a small and intimate social environment enters a much bigger universe of people, whose sometimes consequential communication arrives unpredictably. And when we move from e-mail to the Web, we face a medium so vivid and interactive as to offer a tool of seduction with unprecedented power.
A particular problem for me is techno-lust. The Web makes it so easy to window shop! I won’t tell you how much time I’ve spent cyber-evaluating the Blackberry Torch and the Palm Pre (some of it on my iPhone). This research hasn’t yet resulted in a purchase, but it has ensured that ads for cell phones follow me all over the Web, and this in turn has triggered a broader research program that is now entering its penultimate phase: After considering several alternatives, I’ve again narrowed it down to the Blackberry Torch and the Palm Pre.
So there you go: covetousness, schadenfreude, anxiety, dread, and on and on. It’s the frequent fruitlessness of such feelings that the Buddha is said to have pondered after he unplugged from the social grid of his day — that is, the people he lived around — and wandered off to reckon with the human predicament. Maybe his time off the grid gave him enough critical distance from these emotions to discover his formula for liberation from them. In any event, it’s because the underlying emotions haven’t changed, and because the grid conveys and elicits them with such power, that his formula holds appeal for many people even, and perhaps especially, today.
Personally, I’m a fan of the formula, or at least of the version of it I’ve seen on modern American meditation retreats. If this column hasn’t featured lush praise for it, that’s partly because I’ve already written rapturously — a year ago, on this very Web site — about a previous retreat. But it’s also because I don’t want to oversell the program. The serenity tends to fade once you plug back into the grid. Sustaining even modest mindfulness in the modern world is a challenge.
But I’m working on it, trying to keep living in the moment. I meditated this morning. My fingernails remain impressive. And I’m totally over that Paris Hilton thing — it was just a momentary lapse.
Postscript: If you’re interested in the details: the retreat I attended was in Massachusetts, at the Insight Meditation Society, which teaches in the Vipassana tradition. (A prominent Vipassana retreat center on the West Coast is Spirit Rock.) The teachers at this particular retreat were Narayan Liebenson Grady and Michael Liebenson Grady of the Cambridge Insight Meditation Center. (I’m a little reluctant to disclose even these bare details, as there’s a kind of implied intimacy at these retreats that I wouldn’t want to violate, but since I’ve said virtually nothing about the retreat itself, my conscience is fairly clear.)
