slippery concepts and time displaced interactions

Digital Wellbeing is a slippery concept, but a very useful one. I think. From the physical impact of increasing levels of sedentary and screen-moderated work to the psychological impact of the unbounded online task space we are in a zone now where digital wellbeing is a core self-care skill at every age. 

Digital needs vary throughout lifespan, also. Right now, the pioneers of the ubiquitous online digital space and presence are starting to move into a life stage where they need to define the needs of older people online. This will need a move from a digital deficit model to one of digital enablement, sensory support and less of the constant upchurn of new irrelevant system learning. 

At the other end of the agespan, children online need to move from a behavioural approach defined by fear of online risk to one which embraces online possibilities and asserts digital rights. Children (and teenagers, especially) need space to experiment, learn, construct identity and make mistakes. You don't get to that in a tediously constant risk environment.

For many adults the endlessly spawning nature of online digital administration has created online work, education and home administration spaces of dystopian intensity where tasks proliferate, endlessly and boundlessly. Not least among these task-spawning areas is wellbeing, where bots, apps, tasks, calendars, to-dos, alerts and more all cluster around the increasing task space of maintaining happiness and optimism in a complex modern world.

My digital wellbeing task list includes three social actions for each hundred comments read

I scan the comments section. People are talking about: peace of mind and safety; navigating wellbeing; reducing their use of digital activities to increase their wellbeing; information and relatable sources.

Five useful tips for getting the most out of your course

Interested to see the five useful tips essentially reduce to: self identify, interact, follow, bookmark, record and resist the urge to lurk. The same basic rules of interacting on forums. 

The potential unfamiliar term here, lurking, is a concept that has been around since well before the online social space. Group-created magazines and resources such as APAs (amateur press associations) and Zines (amateur produced magazines) used the term RAEBNC (pronounced ray-b-nik or rayb-nich in conversation) to stand for "Read and Enjoyed but no Comment" for exactly that moment in time when you have completed viewing the information item but have nothing to add. 

In physical space training (I train in both environments) there is a body language equivalent of RAEBNC - eye contact, a nod, a look, it varies student by student. The urge (expressed by some of my fellow trainers and most of my fellow managers) to have everyone "turn on their cameras" during sessions, meetings, etc. may come partly from that need to feel that the information you have shared has landed. 

The Teams/Zoom/etc. thumbsup 👍 is sometimes seen used in this way during group learning or sessions, but feels comparatively vague and unreliable. 

and.... where are you from?

Questions to start a conversation is a core part of online course building, of course. Why have you decided to join us on this course? is a classic up there with Well, what do you do?

Hm. I am procrastinating by doing this course. I actually need to be building an online course. But I don't want it to contribute the heavy exhausting online digital task burden we are all labouring under constantly at the moment. I want it underpinned by principles of digital wellbeing. So I'm starting by gathering ideas about how to do this. 

That probably has covered most of my key learning aims for completing this course, although there is another; I am recovering from illness and building up my speed at both reading and writing. Ideally I ought to be doing this as an exercise, a bit a day. That has not really happened. 

Final question is as ever: How will you use the information you get from this course? Well, the course is linked to my area of work, but this is coming from a very different angle from my usual work task space of social care's preoccupation with digital risk and safeguarding and online child protection. 

This library and information studies approach of providing core information and enabling the individual to construct their own actions and solutions is very crucial in Early Help practice, and a space I hope to develop.

a gentle rain of overgrown hedges, friendly cats and pot plants left by garden gates

Each missive starts with the awkward statement: I am still alive. Didn't disappear into the pandemic or my medical disaster or whatever other crises I navigated when my head was in a difficult place. And here I am and I am back and I am just coming off a day of online discussions, a popular videoconferencing software solution re-envisioning us as Brady Bunch heads alongside social chatter on a variety of different channels and devices, time-sliced through my past and present, a world of buzzes and chimes and lines left hanging. This is the future now, and the conversations never stop, that channel just pauses or you drift off, midsenten

Like a lot of people, I did a variety of things during the pandemic lockdown of 2020-21 to reduce social isolation, with variable levels of success:

• Joined local community messaging boards. This has lead to knowing some of the names of the friendlier local cats, along with more unexpected results like making banana bread for the first time; 
• Chatted with contacts and colleagues via various work-based closed messaging services;
• Folded friends, acquaintances and family into various discrete technologically-enabled closed chat groups, with rich multimedia content; and
• Experimented with leaving a video chat channel open during work hours. That didn't last!

I might have done more, but I got very ill. The illness had a hard impact on my visual cortex, so my eyes are impacted. This left me struggling with some things. Minecraft motion sickness, visual distortion migraines. It also left me dragging through low energy levels, and nervous about communication.

Through all that the various channels have continued to offer a slow steady rain of news and notices. A gentle dusk-dawn chorus of : here is the news. It turns up in the timeline, like a soft keep-in-touch from your surrounding environment.  .

It's shoddy telepathy, but you never really wanted good telepathy. The mental channels are busy enough with your own thoughts. This is more like tide-washed debris caught in a filter; the detritus and flotsam of the noosphere, the dataspace, the information nation.

getting human voices into my working day

One of the things I have noticed about lockdown is the lack of human voices. Of course, I don't live alone, and there are kids and dogs and neighbours shrieking/barking/having fun in the back gardens (I live in a terrace) and workmen and dog-walkers and daily health walkers doing their job and business out front, but it's not the same as someone in your workplace gently discussing a problem five desks away, far enough to be screenable if you need to concentrate, close enough to tune in if you lack interest. Work had a music to it; the undernoise of the city centre (buses, weather, crowds) the intrusive squawks of buskers and vehicle alarms, the soft clatter of blinds, ventilation, machines and the sound of people talking to themselves, concentration humming, foraging for tea and biscuits, chatting, discussing, swearing gently at recalcitrant technology, hmming, aha-ing, tapping, typing and generally making the sound of working.

In its absence, I've struggled to concentrate. At work, when things get too noisy, or the tinnitus shrieks, I use that Youtube Classic, Ten Hours of Pink Noise. At home, that just makes me feel more isolated. So I've taken to listening to work-related seminars and short videos. But everyone overperforms and is too exciting, too groundbreaking, too sincere. I don't belong to the Youtube generation. This pitch and intensity is so needy, I can't do other work while it's going on.

In my quest to find someone calm enough, I turned to the motherlode of mindful narration, Sir David Attenborough. I can't listen to him during the working day, as the subject matter is always too thrilling, but the calming, measured tones approximate the professional sounds I am familiar with. My species' morning chorus, if you like. So I let him talk briefly through an observation or two (Life Stories is good) while I check my morning emails and meeting schedule, pick up yesterday's lists and reminders and sketch out the work of the day.

It has to be audio only, of course. Try to listen to David Attenborough on Youtube and he'll mention something you just have to look at. Don't take my word for this. Try playing this video in a hidden tab. You'll look, I promise.

she's doesn't mind the lagging it's the sarcasm she don't need

For a bit I was holding on for this message, just for the sheer novelty. But then I got sick of it and started hanging up early. It's the way it seems to be questioning your life choices. How did you end up being the only one on this web call, in an overcrowded room not set up for work, that really needs a thorough clean, especially the bits with black mould on, hmm?

You'll notice I have terrible eye drift there. My vidwindow (a little Max Headroom for you there p-p-p-p pop pickers) is a long way from my cam. What's the solution? Skype eyes:

Every time I catch my eyes flipping to little postage-stamp me I draw them back to the skype eyes. Eye contact when I'm making a point. Stare down the blank cyclops of the cam. Would they work better if they were less cartoony? Would it work better if they were Tilda Swinton's eyes?

It's weird how contemporary Max Headroom still sounds, even though it's just that dude from Orphan Black in a load of prosthetics with an MTV spot playing in the background:

While you're watching your colleagues and family and friends going full block-and-stutter, imagine that you're r-r-r-r-running some semi-wet-ops investigative journalist/sleb/social worker into a handy plot-configuration that will starkly expose the bleak dystopianism of m-m-m-m-modern life. Which, honestly, you probably are.