Mindful Tech: Developing a More Contemplative and Reflective Relationship With Our Digital Devices and Apps
Keywords:
Technology, Mindfulness, Behavior, Contemplative Pedagogy, ReflectionAbstract
Today’s digital technologies are both powerful and powerfully distracting. The challenge we face is to use them to their best advantage, and to ours. This article describes one method that may help us to face this challenge: bringing mindful attention to the ways we currently use our digital devices and apps, discovering in the process what is harmful, or at least disadvantageous, in our current digital habits, and through this process formulating more beneficial ways to work online. The bulk of this article reports on the mindfulness exercises developed for a course on Information and Contemplation that has been taught in the University of Washington’s Information School since 2006 and that form the basis for a new book, “Mindful Tech: How to Bring Balance to Our Digital Lives” (Yale, 2016).References
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