Despite his much-hyped culpability, Steven Paul Jobs
Paul Jobs was not devoid of creative vision.
It was his sheer aptitude to foresee the future in the perspective of things
that contemporaries even did not guess, that had transformed Apple from
the darkest corner of a garage to the pinnacle of commercial glory.
It is also quite paradoxical that when the maiden iPhone was
launched to the inquisitive sight of the larger audience,
Steve Jobs was even himself skeptical about the
supreme success of the gadget he had brought about.
The spur of technological evolution in itself
is not intuitively decent or dreadful.
The cause of concern is the basic human
adaptability with fast-paced technological growth.
Saving an exceptional calamitous incident in the offing, the super-fast
journey of technological furtherance will proceed to the infinity.
In the realm of this reality, the modern rationalist human outlook is gradually
disappearing from the philosophical scene of technological affinity,
that was originally addressed to serve mankind.
This is what the relevant author and computer science faculty at Georgetown University,
California viz., Calvin C. Newport speaks about in his much talked about book,
Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World.
While penning his thoughts in the latter stages of 1940s,
the Trappist monk and an eminent scholar Thomas Merton
discussed how the ingredients of technology penetrate, and
render a new shape to the internal lifestyle of modern people.
He was also of the view that television could have a substantial role as the artificial
alternative to the world of entertainment rather than basic natural love and emotions.
An eminent German philosopher, Martin Heidegger, discharged
similar thoughts five years before Thomas Merton's comments.
Heidegger mentioned that the shifting from speaking to the
writing zone, the use of typewriter was a suitable substitute.
But, the transition was not without its flaws.
In spite of embracing the convenience of writing and scripting, the
typewriter equipment had snatched the decency of manual creativity.
The transition from hand to machine had happened naturally and discreetly
such that the mechanization had become the essentiality in human life.
As one staggers in the modern digital environment, these observations
by Merton and Heidegger seem a bit bizarre in today’s context.
It is a known fact that both of them spent most of their adolescence in a world,
which was natural, and there was a distinct absence of technological dominance,
far from the intricacies of the virtual world.
Nowadays, people do take solace from modern gadgets and devices, which are
digitally equipped together with the power of artificial intelligence.
The human behavioral attitude of over-reliance
on goes quite well with the digital smartphones.
An added contribution is the entry of modern software that stimulates a person’s
fondness towards gadgets and appliances, and the bonding is hard to disseminate.
In light of Cal Newport’s latest book published in February 2019 under the
nomenclature, Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World,
the penchant for modern-day devices is duly addressed.
Newport goes about his subject with an uncompromising confrontational
and logical technique, which surely seems for many as radical.
This is essentially, what draws one about this book:
it does not strike any blows, insisting on progressive
changes in behavior if people are to get an opportunity
to rebuild a deliberate strategy to their digital domain.
The very first section of the book lays the dilemma
and takes us through this process of detoxification;
the second episode demonstrates what one ought
to do with the new minimalist existence.
Deep Work's bestselling author presents a technology-based conception that has
already bettered thousands of lives in this informative and inspiring creation.
Digital minimalists are scattered everywhere, like cobwebs.
They are the people, who are serene, cool and able to have lengthy
discussions on their mobiles without casting desultory glimpse.
They can get busy in a decent book, a
gardening chore, or a relaxed daylight move.
Without the insatiable impulse to report the interaction,
they can have loads of fun with family and society.
They remain aware of the day's headlines, but they do not feel stressed by it.
They do not encounter apprehension of isolation, as they now
know what practices give credence and contentment to them.
Newport still lends people a title for this silent motion and helps to
make a convincing argument in the tech-sopping community for its gravitas.
Pervasive-sense suggests to turn off alerts or
obligatory ceremonies like watching a digital siesta,
and they don't back up far enough to help an individual
retain control of the technological existences,
and the mandates of household, peers, and employment
complicate efforts to disconnect entirely.
What one requires rather is a careful way of deciding which tools
to choose, for what considerations and on what situations.
Newport recognizes the fundamental precepts of digital
minimalists and the opinions that encompass them,
attempting to draw on a variety of true-life examples both from
Amish farmers to anxious parents to Silicon Valley techies.
He certainly indicates that how these people rethink their association
with social media, reinventing offline world simple pleasures,
and reconnecting with their inner characters
mostly through regular seclusion periods.
He then accords artifices to integrate these usages into a person's life,
beginning with a thirty-day planning process of digital decluttering which
has eventually helped thousands, who feel less confounded and more assured.
Technology is neither right nor wrong, inherently.
The secret is to use it instead of allowing it to exploit
an individual for promoting the values and beliefs.
This book points the way forward.
It is straightforward to feel upset at the job.
It feels like a person never has time to do anything substantive
between packed itineraries with email messages, conferences,
and pass-ups and the continual dragging of social media and the 24-hour media frenzy.
Thus, when Cal Newport, creator and faculty member of computer science,
published Deep Sometime in 2016, many would deem this as a smarter way ahead.
In the book, Newport suggested that one needs to be intentional about how
the time is spent to do the most select work and live a systematic life.
The suggestion was meaningful in 2016, and still, in many ways, it is relevant now.
In the next few years, people's lives have become more hectic and
disordered, particularly when it fits the mutual technological alliance.
It can be as fruitful, and as annoying depending on how an individual
uses them like email messages, messaging apps, social media, and so on.
How can one get the maximum out of the cool technology
sections while safeguarding oneself against the awful?
The element of technology has been a significant
factor in the financial growth of mankind.
It is the symbol of prosperity in the modern era.
However, one has also got to determine what technology can
have profound impressions, many of which are staggering,
so an individual must continue to engage holistically in emerging technologies
to start figuring out how to optimize them, what to accept, what to eliminate.
In the subject book,Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life
in a Noisy World, Cal Newport strives to answer these enigmas.
One can also restore mutual relation with technology to assist all human beings by
matching the digital minimalist acumen and not
the opposite because that can be damaging.