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We\u2019re running all sorts of experiments on the human race nowadays. Widespread vaccination, widespread exposure to wireless fields, widespread exposure to pornography, and constant tests to see just how often the public will believe highly convenient suicides, among many other experiments\u2026maybe it\u2019s all safe and harmless, maybe, but I completely understand how some people can worry about such things.<\/p>\n
The list is long, but today I want to talk about one that annoys me, if not necessarily worries me: instant communication. Ten years ago, when I walked into a classroom, I would be greeted with the sound of students talking\u2014not something to annoy me, as I rather encourage kids at college to talk to each other, make friends, form study groups, that sort of thing\u2026just not while I\u2019m talking at the board, of course. Sure, I\u2019d have to spend a few seconds getting them to quiet down, but that comes with the territory.<\/p>\n
Nowadays, the rooms are silent when I walk in. Oh, there are still plenty of students, but now they\u2019re all hunched over their little communication devices, texting away, and it doesn\u2019t stop when I start class. It\u2019s not just on campus, either, time and again I\u2019ll be talking to a friend and I have to shut up, as the friend responds to a chirp or buzz from a phone. Too many people respond far too quickly to every little text on the phone, but I respect some altruism there: too many people stress far too much when their texts aren\u2019t replied to, quickly.<\/p>\n
A precursor to the texting experiment is e-mail\u2014same principle, and I\u2019ve experienced many students to write e-mails to me in \u201ctxt\u201d language\u2026and get upset when I don\u2019t respond in a few minutes. I\u2019ve had days where I have 4 e-mails from the same student over the course of a half hour, wondering why I haven\u2019t responded.<\/p>\n
One of the giants of computer science is Donald Knuth; his book series The Art of Computer Programming<\/em> is on the bookshelf of most everyone interested in such things. How does he feel about e-mail<\/a>?<\/p>\n Given Knuth\u2019s renown, many people seek him out. If you\u2019re one of those people, however, you\u2019ll end up disappointed. On arriving at Knuth\u2019s homemade Stanford homepage<\/a>, you\u2019ll notice that no email address is provided. If you dig deeper, you\u2019ll eventually find a page named email.html<\/a> which opens with the following statement:<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cI have been a happy man ever since January 1, 1990, when I no longer had an email address. I\u2019d used email since about 1975, and it seems to me that 15 years of email is plenty for one lifetime.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n Now, I grant he had little choice, he was probably receiving thousands of e-mails a day even in 1990 (I get over a hundred, not counting those to my campus account). I use the delete key often and \u201ccut and paste\u201d to deal with those requiring a response, while he has minions to organize his \u201csnail mail\u201d correspondence (it may take 3 months to get a response).<\/p>\n But the fact remains: he realized that all the near-instant communication was sucking up too much of his time, and walked away from it nearly 30 years ago. Of course, he can walk away from it\u2026it\u2019s not an option for most of us.<\/p>\n \u2026. In 2014, the Boise State anthropologist John Ziker released the results of a faculty time-use study<\/a>, which found that the average professor spent a little over 60 hours a week working, with 30 percent of that time dedicated to email and meetings. Anecdotal reports hint that this allocation has only gotten worse over the past five years. \u201cThe days of the ivory tower are a distant memory,\u201d concludes Ziker, and many burnt-out professors agree.<\/em><\/p>\n Wow, 18 hours a week on \u201ce-mails and meetings.\u201d I\u2019ve had my share of \u201ce-mail meetings\u201d so I can accept these two time-suckers being lumped together. It can get quite onerous: at the community college of less than a thousand students, I had 4 people above me in the chain of command (and 4 more off campus), and so every day I\u2019d get \u201cimportant\u201d e-mails from on high. Mostly it was my bosses congratulating each other on awarding each other trips or Excellence Awards, and I could safely ignore those, but when it came time for a student complaint? I\u2019d easily get three different e-mails from three different bosses asking me to explain myself.<\/p>\n While I\u2019m a very fast writer, my replies to such would take forever to compose: every word or stray punctuation mark might be used against me, so I had to be curt (but not too curt!) and informative (but not too informative!). E-mails are a permanent record, you see, leaving a paper trail (heh) which could easily be incriminatory.<\/p>\n I sure think we need to be less communication-intensive in general. I know the corporate world thinks otherwise, but the article I cited above makes a case for campus to be different.<\/p>\n First, universities have more freedom to experiment than a business struggling in a competitive market. Georgetown University, where I work, has been around since the time of George Washington (you can still see the steps where this founding father once gave a speech on campus): It\u2019s unlikely that after two centuries our downfall will be experimenting with email norms. The academy should leverage this durability to take the lead in exploring how to preserve the value of focused thought in a society overwhelmed by distraction.<\/em><\/p>\n Constantly having to respond to e-mail, and respond quickly, makes it impossible to focus thought, at least for some. Scholars are supposed to be all about the thinking\u2026I think this is a little overblown and bottom line, if severely curtailing e-mail is a good thing for academics, it\u2019s almost certainly a good thing for everyone else. We\u2019re not that weird, after all.<\/p>\n Second, by prioritizing deep work universities would get better at their primary tasks of research and pedagogy. Producing and organizing complex knowledge requires uninterrupted concentration \u2014 the more time you have to focus, the better the work you produce. Switching from Task A (say, preparing a course lecture) to Task B (say, responding to \u201curgent\u201d emails) can significantly reduce your cognitive capacity \u2014 essentially making you artificially dumber. Professors are increasingly buffeted by a relentless tide of digital disruptions and onerous administrative demands.<\/em><\/p>\n Again, I think the author missing something here. We could curtail e-mail by thinning the herd of the administrative caste; we have considerably more administrators and support for admin than we have faculty on campus. Cull the admin and I bet those onerous administrative demands will reduce as well.<\/p>\n Finally, a reorganization of academic life to support careful thought and sustained attention would produce benefits that extend well beyond the campus. It would allow higher education to proudly present itself as the last bastion of focus in a distracted world\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n While the author is lecturing us from his high horse, he\u2019s neglected to realize an important obstacle here. At the end of the year, admin presents all those e-mails they send as part of their justification for their job, so I suspect there\u2019d be some pushback.<\/p>\n Ignoring the legion of $150,000 a year administrators blocking the way, he does describe how we might restructure our campus for less e-mail:<\/p>\n What concrete changes are needed to create a Donald Knuth-style academic culture? I propose two starting points: a return to intellectual specialization, and an overhaul of the way we structure faculty service obligations.<\/em><\/p>\n By intellectual specialization, he means letting faculty focus on teaching and research (hey, I\u2019ve proposed as much, myself), and less on jumping through administrative hoops like indoctrination camp. So, yes, that\u2019s a good idea. About that legion\u2026<\/p>\n Imagine if when you first arrive on campus, instead of being shown how to configure your email inbox or access the university IT systems, you\u2019re introduced to the assistant who will handle most of that for you.<\/em><\/p>\n The author points out Knuth has a full time assistant to handle all the other stuff, and actually proposes all faculty get the same. I have to laugh\u2014the counter to faculty spending too much time dealing with the excessive administrators and staff is to give faculty their own staff to deal with the surplus staff already on campus! Brilliant! I suppose it might work but I still think decimating that legion at least nine times over would be a better solution.<\/p>\n In short, we\u2019re already paying a price for the proliferation of ceaseless communication and administrative busywork. The question is whether we\u2019re finally ready to admit it and have an honest discussion about whether it\u2019s worth it.<\/em><\/p>\n Dude\u2019s a little out of touch here, as our soaring tuition and slow exodus of students from campus to, well, anything else, says what we\u2019re currently doing isn\u2019t worth it. He\u2019s clearly a bit behind the times.<\/p>\n And that\u2019s rather the message: scholars picked up years ago that \u201cinstant communication\u201d via e-mail was a deadly time-consuming trap. Now that \u201cinstant\u201d is now even faster on our phones, I do advise the gentle reader:<\/p>\n Put down the phones, you don\u2019t need to read those texts the instant they come in\u2026and you certainly don\u2019t have to respond. And for God\u2019s sake, if someone\u2019s talking to you in person, let that communication take top priority over anything the electronic device has to say.<\/p>\n www.professorconfess.blogspot.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"