FALL 2000 | By DOUGLAS IMBROGNO, Editor

ANY DAY IT 'S GOING TO HAPPEN, if it hasn't already. In a dark room lit by flickering candles thirty people sit stock still on cushions. They're in a retreat hall at some Buddhist center deep in the pine trees or on some secluded panoramic mountaintop. All is silent except for the usual fidget of novice meditators, and the assorted sniffs, sneezes and swallowings of this person or that.

Then: 'Chirrup-chirrup-chirrup!'

A pause as 80 ears lock onto the sound (the more seasoned meditators mentally noting, 'Hearing, hearing,' as the sound enters their field of attention).

Then: 'Chirrup-chirrup-chirrup!'

A rustling of cloth as one of the meditators unfolds his hands from his lap. He twists an arm around to his hip and grasps the device hooked to his belt, then says in hushed tones:

"I told you not to call me here. I'm busy! I'm in the meditation hall! Yes, of course we're meditating! I know I'm supposed to pick up duct tape on the way back. What? Bill called? What did he say about how the stock is doing...?"

"Analysts at Cahners In-Stat Group predict that more that 1 billion wireless [web-enabled mobile phones or smart phones] will be sold worldwide in 2003..." (from article in the August 2000 Publish magazine)

YOU HAVE TO WONDER what an additional 1 billion phones will do to people's attention spans, which -- in this age of cell phones, pagers, Personal Digital Assistants, faxes and e-mail -- must be about as short as ever in human history.

The "Communications Revolution," needless to say, is on a roll, if not a beep, a buzz and a "You've got mail!" And if we are not communicating, our communication devices are storing up all the communications that are out there looking for us.

Checked your e-mail lately? What's your daily count? If I take a day off from work, when I return to my desk to fire up ol' Microsoft Explorer after setting down my morning cup of coffee, my chest heaves with a sigh as two screenfuls of e-mails, maybe three, avalanche onto the computer. It's up to 50 e-mails per day now, rising fast.

I'm a newspaper editor by profession, so my numbers are higher than average, but the trend is surely -- as the analysts say -- on the "uptick" for all.

That's not even to mention voicemail. ("Didn't you get my message?!") Why are e-mail and voice-mail beginning to feel like Communications Revolution blackmail? ("Fork over your attention to me, NOW, or I will send you e-mails and voice-mails ad nauseum until you do!!!")

DON'T GET ME WRONG, some of this whizbang communications technology can be really whizzy, cool and useful. E-mail recently restitched broken ties between myself and a cabel of beloved high school pals long lost in the mists of time. And my extended Italian family -- who much as we appreciate one another would sooner wait until the next funeral to catch up on news than write a letter -- recently pulled off a fine family reunion partly through e-mail confabs. Meanwhile, my immediate family is conducting almost daily e-mail pow-wows as we create a sort of Mr. Spock "joined mind" to conceptualize an appropriate party for our father on his upcoming 75th birthday.

That's the good news.

The bad news is that new communications technology, in the way we have allowed it to spread virus-like through every moment of daily life, now allows us to be interrupted anywhere, anytime, anyhow for any reason. Our attention -- a fickle, fragile thing at the best of times -- may now be hijacked every second by a piece of plastic in your pocket, a chunk of plastic on your desk, a hockey puck of plastic hooked to your belt, a fliptop rectangle of buttery plastic in your shirt pocket and a humming piece of plastic on the tabletop.

"E-mails, faxes, pager messages and websites can overwhelm us with new information -- at home or office, in our cars or walking down the street [says occupational psychologist Cary Cooper]: "People feel they have to sit at their desks to sort it all out. They have lunch at their terminals. They stop going out so much, and when they do they find they are being harassed by their pagers and mobile phones. They no longer meet people and make contacts because they feel they can't afford the time. They become more aggressive towards, and intolerant of, intrusions. Stress builds up...'" (from the story "Cyber-Info Overload Threatens Health," The Observer)

OF COURSE, IT'S NOT JUST communication devices and computers that commandeer or shatter our attention spans nowadays. Here in America, and increasingly across the world, we live in a consumer and advertising culture that -- 24/7, to use the numerical shorthand that sums up the spirit of the age -- hunts customers like fishing trawlers sweeping the seas for fish. Companies troll out sprawling, interconnected nets, woven with glittery advertising, sales pitches and sexy come-ons, that try to suck up everything in their path.They're fishing for our attention and are expert at hooking it.

You do what you can to shut out some of the boiling white noise of contemporary culture, to create a quieter living space around you. My wife and I choose not to have voice mail at our house. We choose not to have cell phones. We choose not to subscribe to the 50-odd channels available via local cable TV. The five broadcast channels keep our choices simpler and enable us to better control what our 10-year-old and 6-year-old see on the tube.

Suffering from a bad case of info-overload I recently stopped all my magazine subscriptions, but two ("Internet World" and "Tricycle"), and then put the kabosh on a half-dozen e-mail subscription newsletters, to boot. Clearing the decks, making some space.

Sometimes I go on what I call "news fasts." I stop reading the daily newspaper, stop listening to public radio (where I get my broadcast news), stop reading Net news sources (although it's hard not to want to read Salon). This past August, in fact, was a "news fast" month for me. I highly recommend it. You'd be surprised at how refreshing, even liberating, it can be, not to have your consciousness slammed upside the head by the worst acts of human behavior and depravity pouring into your brain with the morning headlines.

Plus, I was able to take a month-long break from the U.S. presidential campaign. It doesn't get much better than that (except maybe to have genuinely inspiring candidates who feel like trustworthy human beings).

PAGE 2: Dis-connecting for serenity's sake

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