No Time to Think

By David Levy Ph.D.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KHGcvj3JiGA
David Levy earned a Ph.D. in Computer Science at Stanford University in 1979 and a Diploma in Calligraphy and Bookbinding from the Roehampton Institute (London) in 1983. He has been investigating how to restore contemplative balance to a world marked by information overload, fragmented attention, extreme busyness, and the acceleration of everyday life. This video is his lecture in Google campus on March 5, 2008
In this video, David Levy points out that the Web and other digital technologies may be the best tools that have ever been created for ratio, for “searching and researching, abstracting, refining and concluding”, but what about intellectus ? When we are googling, do we have time to think? Information technologies mark the world by information overload, fragmented attention, extreme busyness, and acceleration of everyday life. He also points out that thinking is a slow-time activity! Its more creative aspects can’t be truncated and rushed; thinking is routine and repetitive, mature and creative, ratio and intellectus. When fast time and slow time meet, fast time wins. We tend to do urgent things first and leave non-urgent things behind. Thinking takes time and slow, therefore, we are facing today’s information environmental crisis.
David asks that what our solution for avoiding the dangers of information overload and media saturation of ruminative and “mindless” thinking is? How can we satisfy our need for silence and sanctuary for creative reflection and engagement? He claims that creative thought can’t be rushed since it is a slow-time activity, but it can be nurtured; the mind can be trained to be quieter and more receptive through concentrative and contemplative practices and mind chatter can be reduced; we can’t make creative thought happen, but we can prepare the ground for it. He provides four directions for resolving today’s information environment crisis: become more aware of the nature and extent of the problem; design contemplative physical environments; design contemplative virtual environments and design contemplative information practice.
David has organized four conferences to bring scholars, researcher, artists, and religious leaders together to look at the nature of this problem: conference on information, silence & sanctuary (May 2004), workshop on mindful work & technology (March 2006), course on information &contemplation (spring 2006) and conference on No Time to Think (June 2008)