Here and Now: Spatiotemporal Perceptions and the Experience of the Present in the Digital Age

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Here and Now:

Spatiotemporal Perceptions and

the Experience of the Present in the Digital Age

By Paula Carmicino

27 June, 2014

Ir. Jakoba Mulderplein 30, Amsterdam NL Phone# 0638013161

paula.carmicino@gmail.com

Student# 10618996 Supervisor: Carolin Gerlitz Second Reader: Marc Tuters New Media and Digital Culture MA

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1. Prologue: Awakening in the Digital Age?

A recent YouTube video1

made its rounds throughout social networks featuring the popular comedian Louis C.K. discussing with Conan O’Brien why he doesn’t want to buy his daughter a smartphone;

I think these things are toxic, especially for kids...they don't look at people when they talk to them and they don't build empathy… You need to build an ability to just be yourself and not be doing something. That's what the phones are taking away, is the ability to just sit there. That's being a person. Because underneath everything in your life there is that thing, that empty—forever empty… And sometimes when things clear away, you're not watching anything, you're in your car, and you start going, “Oh no, here it comes. That ‘I'm alone’.” It starts to visit on you. Just this sadness. Life is tremendously sad, just by being in it… That's why we text and drive. I look around, pretty much 100% of the people driving are texting… And everybody's murdering each other with their cars. But people are willing to risk taking a life and ruining their own because they don't want to be alone for a second, because it's so hard.

He recounts an anecdote in which he was alone in his car when a Bruce Springsteen song came on. The song provoked sadness in him and he felt an urge to pick up his phone to text one (or 50) of his friends “Hi,” but stopped himself;

I said, “You know what? Don't. Just be sad. Just let the sadness. Stand out of the way of it, and let it hit you like a truck.” And I let it come, and I just started to feel “Oh my God,” and I pulled over and I just cried like a bitch. I cried so much. And it was beautiful. Sadness is poetic. You're lucky to live sad moments. And then I had happy feelings. Because when you let yourself feel sad, your body has like antibodies, it has happiness that comes rushing in to meet the sadness. So I was grateful to feel sad, and then I met it with true, profound happiness. It was such a trip. The thing is, because we don't want that first bit of sad, we push it away with a little phone or a jack-off or the food. You never feel completely sad or completely happy, you just feel kinda satisfied with your product, and then you die.

The video instantly became viral, posted on Facebook walls of those who are both proponents and critics of social media sites, noted by my own observations. C.K.’s sentiments resonated with many people and are echoed in a series of anti-smartphone/social media campaigns launched by various companies, including the Coca-Cola Media Guard2

and the Polar Cell Phone Nullifier3

, as well as viral user-uploaded videos such as Look Up4

and I Forgot My Phone5

. The basic sentiment in these videos is !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 1_{https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5HbYScltf1c} 2_!_{https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_u3BRY2RF5I} 3_{https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fN7Fg0LWZsI} 2_!_{https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_u3BRY2RF5I} 3_{https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fN7Fg0LWZsI} 4_{https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z7dLU6fk9QY}

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that people should put down their screens and start engaging with the present moment, that is, start being mindful.

Mindfulness, a concept originating in Buddhist practice, has become a popular notion in Western culture since mainstream western Buddhism emerged in the later half of the 20th century, coupled with the share-ability of Buddhist philosophy over the internet (Wikipedia Buddhism in the West). In fact, if one judges by the instances the word is referenced in pop articles, “mindfulness” appears to be a buzzword, making it to nearly every rendition of “How to Be Happy” lists, such as one found in the Huffington Post: 11 Habits of People Who Never Worry.6

That all these videos and articles are shared on the very medium they criticize could be an indicator that social media culture is currently at a crossroads regarding how they feel about new media usage and their experience of the present moment; indeed, it is difficult to be asked to put down the one thing that connects you to everything.

In past years Google has invited Eckhart Tolle, a popular spiritual author who wrote The

Power of Now, to speak on topics of remaining in the present moment amongst new

technologies. Recently, at the 2014 Wisdom 2.0 Conference in San Francisco, Karen May, the vice president for people development at Google, spoke with Tolle on the topic of “Awakening in the Digital Age.”7

The questions asked by May reveal a sense of uncertainty felt by people concerning how to stay present in an age when beckoning screens are everywhere: “How have you navigated temptation of device distraction? How can we collectively learn to continue to stay present? How do we live in this digital age?” including a question asking how a person whose work is so closely connected to a new media device can learn to “integrate stillness in a way that doesn’t feel like you have to choose to step off the train” (Wisdom 2.0 interview 2014). In the interview, Tolle describes his vision of a dystopian world;

New technology arises which has an addictive effect, it prevents [the generation that grows up with it] from focusing attention on anything for very long, which is the prerequisite for coming up with anything creative: is to become still, go within, and then

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

5_{https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OINa46HeWg8}

6_{http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/04/14/dont-worry-strategies-tips-habits_n_5092683.html?ncid=fcbklnkushpmg00000063}! 7_{http://www.wisdom2summit.com/Videos/myriad_single_element/1279}

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creative solution comes. So, a generation grows up that is completely out of touch with their inner being. They can no longer find creative solutions to problems, because the deeper place where creativity arises is not accessible to them anymore. And two or three generations later the entire civilization collapses.

!

While this dystopia has the potential to manifest, both Tolle and C.K. present a form of techno-deterministic alarmism, ascribing agency to the technology alone. While C.K.’s solution is to withdraw from technology completely, Tolle acknowledges an individual might remain present and centered in the midst of device-overload if they are able to exercise discipline and create a daily routine in which media doesn’t dominate their life.

The virality of the topic of whether or not new media devices are encroaching too much upon people’s lives, plucking them from the present, made me curious if these alarmist accounts of society’s relationship with new technology could be substantiated. I considered the possibility of a more nuanced approach to studying attention in the digital age, perhaps as a distributed assembly of attention organization, a multi-layered arrangement, with more than just technology and media at the crux of where one’s attention ultimately goes.

2. Introduction

If the reader is familiar with basic Buddhist philosophy, they might easily notice parallels between Louis C.K.’s anecdote and certain Buddhist concepts. The “forever empty” C.K. speaks of refers to emptiness or dukkha, literally meaning contemptible void, and translated into English as suffering (Mahathera 74); and the moment in which one just allows themself to feel sadness, to observe it, then watch it pass into feelings of happiness (in the case of C.K.) can be referred to as mindfulness – “keeping one’s consciousness alive to the present reality” (Hahn 11). The religion of Buddhism speaks directly to these present-day concerns of harnessing the connectivity of new media to avoid having to face that contemptible void, the “forever empty”. This isn’t the only time in history we have used outside sources to avoid dealing with these feelings, of course, but considering the current state of ubiquitous computing, the acceleration society, and the attention economy, these concerns are evermore in the forefront. Ultimately, this thesis will

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explore the theme of how individuals experience the present moment while part of a society perpetually engaged in media practices.

It is first necessary to explain why Buddhism is relevant for this particular topic. The Buddhist religion is a spiritual practice that is over 2550 years old (Keng, Smoski, and Robins 1041). I will not attempt to summarize the whole of Buddhism in this thesis, but, in general, all Buddhist teachings share the same chief characteristics encompassed in the four Noble Truths, which are: life is full of suffering (dukkha), there is a cause of suffering (dukkha-samudaya), it is possible to end suffering (dukkha-nirodha, or Nibbāna), and the path that leads to the end of suffering, the Middle Way (dukkha-nirodha-marga) (Mahathera 223). In order to attain Nibbāna, one must follow the Middle Way which consists of the five Precepts (not to kill, not to steal, not to commit adultery, not to lie, and not to drink intoxicating liquor); the four Sublime States (lovingkindness, compassion, appreciative joy, and equanimity); the ten Transcendental virtues (generosity, morality, renunciation, wisdom, energy, patience, truthfulness, resolution, loving-kindness, and equanimity); and the Noble Eightfold Path (right understanding, right thoughts, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness and right concentration) (Mahathera xiii). Right mindfulness (there is also a wrong mindfulness that is accompanied by malevolent intentions as one engages in mindfulness) is integral to the Noble Eighfold Path and necessary for the cessation of suffering. But does this philosophy hold any weight in modern western culture? I ask the reader to keep the following rhetorical questions in mind: In our digitally-obsessed society, where one’s attention is continuously being pulled in all directions, is there still room for staying present to non-media-related objects? And moreover, would staying present help relieve the dukkha that is increasingly overcoming our accelerating society?

In order to make sense of an individual’s experience of time and their focus of attention, I first dissect what is meant by the present, comparing spiritual, scientific, and digital accounts of time, engaging with diverse authors spanning many studies such as David Loy, Nicholas Carr, Anthony Aveni, Jack Petranker, Jon Kabat-Zinn, Thich Nhat Hanh , Albert Einstein, Stephen Hawking, Wubbo Ockels, Douglas Rushkoff, Paul Virilio, Geert

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Lovink, Robert Gehl, Thomas Eriksen, Andrew Murphie, and David Berry. Zooming in on the concept of being present (paying attention to the here and now and not, for instance, focusing attention on the stories and dramas within social media), I explore the role mindfulness has in new media practices, using both spiritual and psychological perspectives. Through this analysis I hope to further understand what being mindful implies for an individual, and perhaps more importantly, the possible effects of not being mindful. In this section, I will use a variety of academic texts from scientific researchers in support of mindfulness benefitting one’s psychology, as well as highlight some critiques of mindfulness used in psychological settings stemming from a recent article by Ron Purser and David Loy called Beyond McMindfulness. Since mindfulness requires placing attention on the here and now, it is necessary to turn to the concept of the attention economy, within the acceleration society, to understand how the internet devises techniques to garner one’s attention. I will engage with theories and studies from new media theorists and academics such as Carmen Leccardi, Judy Wajcman, Tiziana Terranova, N. Katherine Hayles, Taina Bucher, Esther Weltevrede, Anne Helmond, and Carolin Gerlitz.

Through empirical research, I investigate how people experience time while using media and while not using media, formulating a finer-grained reading on how and why one focuses their attention on what they do, contending the claim that all blame should lie within the technicity of the devices and social media platforms themselves. The results of the study are organized into five themes: The Organization of Attention Through Various Platforms and Devices, Layers of Attention Through Media and Non-Media Objects, Patterns of Usage, Shared Time, and the Mindfulness / Wellbeing / New Media Usage Correlation. In this study and throughout the thesis, I seek to answer the questions: How

do people experience the present through layers of various new media? How do both digital and non-digital factors affect the experience of time and space and organization of an individual’s attention? And finally, what is the correlation, if any, between an individual’s new media usage, level of mindfulness, and quality of wellbeing?

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3. The Present

What exactly is meant by the present, and more specifically, what does being present entail? Discourses about space and time occur within a multitude of disciplines and have been philosophized by a wide range of theorists, from Aristotle and Descartes to Heidegger and Kant. Adequately covering the plethora of perspectives on space-time in the space (and time) allotted would be cruel to the reader of this thesis, and also for the writer. Instead, I will undertake the topic of presence in the digital age by first exploring religious, scientific, sociological, and technological concepts of spatiotemporal schémas.

The Eternal Present section deals with how time was perceived historically by

civilizations before the construct of mechanized time, or even kept time, as measured by a sundial, for instance, and how these observations relate to the more conceptual notion of the eternal now, which is an experiential elucidation of time. I borrow greatly from theories of David R. Loy, a cultural theorist and Zen teacher, who writes often of new media usage in the context of a person’s dukkha (suffering). In The Relative Present section, I tie connections to the concept of the eternal now to the scientific view of time indicated by the theory of relativities by Albert Einstein, whose discoveries drastically changed the scientific community’s conception of space and time. I also incorporate ideas of Wubbo Ockels, Dutch physicist and astronaut, who claims that the time we experience on Earth is particular to our planet and would not be found elsewhere in space. Finally, the The Cybertime Present as experienced by new media users is explored, focusing on the present as discussed by Douglas Rushkoff, American media theorist, and Paul Virilio, French theorist and critic of cybertime in digital culture. Discourses of time that have been left out of this thesis are, for instance, philosophical accounts (mainly the concept of the specious present, which argues that time cannot be experienced by the senses, only reconstructed by the brain (Varela 9)) and physiological ones (regarding neurological experience of time). However, by obtaining a tighter grasp on the perspectives of the present I have chosen to expand on and their relationship to one another, it is more clearly understood how certain cultures experience the present, and further, how this experience is altered depending on societal norms and spatiotemporal perceptions.

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3.1 The Eternal Present

In Essaouira, you won’t find a clock, because all we got is time. – Amin, an Essaouiran

Understanding the present means understanding what is meant by the here and now, which refers to a particular space (here) and a particular time (now). To grasp this notion of space and time, it is helpful to begin by looking back at ancient civilizations and recognizing how some of the first primitive cultures, as explained by Nicholas Carr in

The Shallows and David Loy in Saving Time: a Buddhist Perspective on the End once

experienced spatiotemporal relations; their relationship with space-time was not so dissimilar from Buddhist or even modern scientific concepts. Before mechanized clocks and even earlier incarnations of “kept” time, such as the sundial, hourglass, and clepsydra (Carr 51), traditional societies experienced time as being; their existence gave rise to time, not the other way around. Time was not viewed as a “Cartesian-like grid for mapping the affairs that happen in this world,” but instead, the patterns that occurred within space and time infused the society with meaning (Loy 36). These civilizations experienced time in conjunction with events. For instance, the Aztecs, an extinct tribal empire dominating Mesoamerica from the fourteenth to sixteenth centuries, believed that the quality of the day’s weather instructed them on how to partake in the day’s activities. Likewise, rituals were performed according to cycles of natural phenomena, such as solstices and moon phases, and for them, it was because the rituals were performed that the natural events occurred. The action was inextricably tied with the resulting existence of time (Loy 39);

These people did not react to the flow of natural events by struggling to harness and control them. Nor did they conceive of themselves as totally passive observers in the essentially neutral world of nature. Instead, they believed they were active participants and intermediaries in a great cosmic drama. By participating in the rituals, they helped the gods of nature to carry their burdens along their arduous course, for they believed firmly that the rituals served formally to close time's cycles. Without their life's work the universe could not function properly. (Aveni 252)

Not just time, but space was also “infused with significance because different places and directions require[d] different responses from [them]” (Loy 41). Loy argues that space

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and time are still religious in a functionalist sense by describing to us “what the world is and how we should live in it,” and claims that current space-time compression disables us from finding a sufficient schéma of meaning in our lives (Loy 36). This point might be easily discredited by persons who do not identify with a religious or spiritual group, but Loy argues that these people are merely deceiving themselves, and that spiritual drives live on “in uncanny secular forms which obsess us because we do not understand what motivates them” (Loy 38). The obsession with the future, for instance, and particularly that the future will fulfill any sense of lack one feels, is a symptom of spiritual requirements. Indeed, from this perspective, time is seen as an empty vessel in which to fill events of interest, in a cause-and-effect manner, in hopes of filling the “sense-of-lack” (Loy 38).

According to Jack Petranker, founder of Center for Creative Inquiry and whose research interests include the lived significance of time and space and new forms of human experience generated by technological knowledge, this dichotomy between the ancient

living time (where time equals living events with time) and the postmodern doing time

(where time equals a grid in which things are done) (Petranker 178) is explained in 24/7:

Time and the Temporality in the Network Society as the lived story vs. the told story. He

writes, “The lived story is the truth of our lives, the ‘way things are.’ In the lived story the sun glides smoothly across the sky, giving order and sequence to the day. The told story, on the other hand, is an abstraction. Rather than being the embedded truth of our lives, it is an account meant to impose order and make sense” (Petranker 178). This sentiment is echoed in Raymond Williams’ “Structures of Feeling,” found in Marxism

and Literature, in which he argues affects of being that dwell strictly in the mind should

not be attributed to consciousness, “for practical consciousness is what is actually being lived, and not only what it is thought is being lived” (Williams 131). If, according to these authors, consciousness is what is on the table, what is meant by consciousness and the difference between “actually being lived” and “thought is being lived” (ibid) needs to be understood.

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interchangeable and frequently used in the Buddhist religion. Throughout this article, I will employ the term mindfulness when speaking of being present, as this term has also been adopted by western psychology (Kabat-Zinn), which I will touch briefly upon in this chapter and more fully in the next. What is mindfulness, then? Thich Nhat Hanh, a renowned Vietnamese Zen Buddhist monk and author, describes it as such;

Mindfulness is the miracle by which we master and restore ourselves. Consider, for example: a magician who cuts his body into many parts and places each part in a different region—hands in the south, arms in the east, legs in the north, and then by some miraculous power lets forth a cry which reassembles whole every part of his body. Mindfulness is like that—it is the miracle which can call back in a flash our dispersed mind and restore it to wholeness so that we can live each minute of life. (Hanh 14)

While this description leans more poetic than scientific, it illustrates the power he believes being mindful can have over the mind and body. Mindfulness is the awareness that arises through “paying attention in a particular way: on purpose, in the present moment, and nonjudgmentally” (Kabat-Zinn 4), also explained as “the nonjudgmental observation of the ongoing stream of internal and external stimuli as they arise” (Baer 125). According to Buddhism, this state of nonjudgmental awareness brings one in touch with the eternal present, which consists of all times—past, present and future— and all places. Comparable to how the ancient civilizations viewed time, the state of mindfulness creates an experience of not being in time, but being time, in what Loy refers to as “being-time,” wherein as long as you perceive yourself as time, you are free from time (Loy 207). Medieval origins dating as far back as the 5th

century exemplify that temporality in which time and space and what happens in time and space is a singular occurrence and not a metaphor of an empty vessel in which immoveable contents are placed from past to future (Loy 43). In the next sections, beginning with scientific discoveries and ending with man-made inventions, I will discuss how our modern homogeneous temporality developed out of these ancient spiritual schémas.

3.2 The Relative Present

In tracing the path of the spiritual presence to our postmodern notion of temporality, it is necessary to visit the mechanistic scientific arena of space-time revelations. While religion and science tend to take polar-opposite stances on numerous issues, it is

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important to note that in regards to space-time there are interestingly many similarities. The primitive quest for spiritual wisdom was driven by questions regarding God and his intention for the world and humans’ role in it. Some of the earliest attempts to answer these spiritual questions were, in fact, mathematical. Galileo tried to address concerns of the inner workings of God’s mind by deciphering The Book of Nature, written by “the great Geometer,” as mathematical laws that governed the cosmos. These laws were discovered by chronographs, which “disassociated time from human events and helped to create the belief in an independent world of mathematically measured sequences” (Mumford 15).

Newer perceptions of space and time were born out of several consequential scientific revelations: Copernicus’s discovery that the sun did not revolve around the earth, but that the earth revolved around the sun, involved a major shift of awareness of space. Darwin’s theory of evolution, likewise, altered people’s concept of time by displacing humans as the star of a dramatic narrative to a tiny speck of existence created accidentally through biological forces of nature. The Newtonian concept of an absolute space and time, completely scientific and mechanical in disposition, still included God as an integral part of the entire construction. God served as an omnipresent, omniscient bystander, eternally connected to the material ether that Newton asserted pervaded the universe (Loy 44). It was only until Einstein’s theory of relativities came out in 1916 that all spiritual tendencies in science were disregarded, due to Einstein’s own omission of any type of God-being in his theories. Ironically, though the outright admission of God no longer had its place in mechanical science, the proof of relativity replaced Newton’s absolute space-time view, causing a return from modern objective space-time to the more ancient experience of being-time, in which time and space are not seen as a continuum, but rather, relative to an observer’s situation.

3.2.1 A Brief Explanation of the Theories of Relativity

While the theory of relativities is quite complex, Einstein managed to explain it for laypeople through simple anecdotes. The theory begins with the postulate that the laws of physics must appear the same to all freely moving observers. They should all be able to

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measure the speed of light, which is a constant, at the same rate, irrespective of their position or velocities. Accordingly, the concept of universal time that is measured by clocks no longer exists. Instead, due to the constancy of the speed of light, everyone’s experience of time is bent to her or his own situation, creating a relative time spectrum in which one person’s perception of time is different than another’s. To explain this idea further, I wish to borrow Einstein’s own words as he explains the frailty of the notion of space;

It is not clear what is to be understood here by "position" and "space." I stand at the window of a railway carriage which is travelling uniformly, and drop a stone on the embankment, without throwing it. Then, disregarding the influence of the air resistance, I see the stone descend in a straight line. A pedestrian who observes the misdeed from the footpath notices that the stone falls to earth in a parabolic curve. I now ask: Do the "positions" traversed by the stone lie "in reality" on a straight line or on a parabola?... In the first place we entirely shun the vague word "space," of which, we must honestly acknowledge, we cannot form the slightest conception, and we replace it by "motion relative to a practically rigid body of reference…The stone traverses a straight line relative to a system of coordinates rigidly attached to the carriage, but relative to a system of co-ordinates rigidly attached to the ground (embankment) it describes a parabola. With the aid of this example it is clearly seen that there is no such thing as an independently existing trajectory, but only a trajectory relative to a particular body of reference. (Einstein 12)

Similarly, “every reference-body (coordinate system) has its own particular time; unless we are told the reference-body to which the statement of time refers, there is no meaning in a statement of the time of an event” (Einstein 26). This is illustrated by his story of a spectator and two flashes of lightning that take place at coordinates A and B, a distance away from each other. When the spectator is asked if the two flashes of lightning occur simultaneously, she answers “yes,” because she, indeed, sees the two flashes of lightning occur simultaneously. But if the same spectator is put on a train moving at x velocity towards coordinate B and asked the same question of the two flashes of lightning, her answer would be “no,” lightning B occurred before lightning A, thus proving there is no such thing as absolute simultaneity (Einstein 25). Of course, these differences in observations are not noticed in everyday situations of movement; they are phenomena only noticeable at speeds near the velocity of light. Nevertheless, Einstein's theories illustrate that time and space are not a priori concepts of human understanding, but relative measures that are defined conditionally (Einstein 35).

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According to Einstein and other scientists such as Richard Feynman and Stephen Hawking, everything that has happened, is happening, and will happen takes place in one instance, and it is only due to the time axis of the four-dimensional space-time grid (the other three being the spatial dimensions of length, width, and height) that events in space are stretched out over what we call a timeframe. To better explain the idea of space-time as four-dimensional, I offer a segment of the fictional story The Time Machine by H. G. Wells;

Well, I do not mind telling you I have been at work upon this geometry of Four Dimensions for some time. Some of my results are curious. For instance, here is a portrait of a man at eight years old, another at fifteen, another at seventeen, another at twenty-three, and so on. All these are evidently sections, as it were, Three-Dimensional representations of his Four-Dimensioned being, which is a fixed and unalterable thing.

‘Scientific people,’ proceeded the Time Traveller, after the pause required for the proper assimilation of this, ‘know very well that Time is only a kind of Space. Here is a popular scientific diagram, a weather record. This line I trace with my finger shows the movement of the barometer. Yesterday it was so high, yesterday night it fell, then this morning it rose again, and so gently upward to here. Surely the mercury did not trace this line in any of the dimensions of Space generally recognized? But certainly it traced such a line, and that line, therefore, we must conclude was along the Time-Dimension. (Wells)

Einstein's assertion that there is no separation between past, present, and future led to the belief in a singular existence and the rejection of the feeling of separation we experience as the moment of now (Giorbran). Similar to ancient civilizations, he believed existence occurred as an intricately connected part of time, not happening as a separate occurrence

in time. This belief is illustrated best in a letter written to a lifelong friend’s family after

the friend died. He wrote that although Besso had preceded them in death, it was of no consequence, "for us physicists believe the separation between past, present, and future is only an illusion, although a convincing one." In his book Open Sky, Paul Virilio describes an impending danger caused by the collapse of our collective and individual relation to time and space in regards to global electronic media. He not only laments the loss of geographical spaces, intimacy, and democracy, but also calls for a revolt—against the

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deceptive and accelerating manipulation of perception by electronic media and repressive political power. Virilio, who has a background in physics, recalls Einstein, reiterating the previous point, “For Einstein, the present is already 'the centre of time'; the past of the original Big Bang is not, and scientifically cannot be, that old centre. The true centre is always new, the centre is perpetual, or to put it even more precisely, the 'present' is an eternal present” (Virilio 136).

As the reader may recall, this eternal present—this singularity of reality—is almost identical to the present moment documented in Buddhism, incorporating the past, present, and future, and all spatial dimensions. It is not such a stretch, then, to claim that proof of Einstein’s relative present is proof of, or at least provides solid evidence for, Buddhism’s notion of presence. This connection has been well documented by many Buddhists and scientists alike (Aich 165). However, even though scientifically proven to be true, there are still those who have never fully adopted Einstein’s timeless view of the universe, since, when working with everyday earthly phenomena, it suffices (and is much simpler) to use the linear cause-and-effect continuum born out of the Newtonian model of absolute space-time. Consequently, returning to an existence that is embedded with time, instead of lived in time has failed to come to pass.

Many scientists believe the theory of relativities is incomplete due its inability to combine fully with quantum theory, the other pillar of modern physics. They ask, if time is solely a direction in space, how then is the uncertainty of quantum mechanics explained? Attempts to reconcile the two have been made but none with total success (Maddox 52–5; Penrose Sec. 34.1, Ch. 30). In 1948, Richard Feynman illuminated one of the most operational interpretations of quantum mechanics that had yet been developed called the Sum over Histories in which he incorporates the notion of time as a direction in space, appending that the probability of an event is established by adding together all the possible accounts of that event, replacing the traditional belief of a single, unique trajectory for a system (Giorbran);

For example, for a particle moving from point A to B we imagine the particle traveling every possible path, curved paths, oscillating paths, squiggly paths, even backward in

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time and forward in time paths. Each path has an amplitude, and when summed the vast majority of all these amplitudes add up to zero, and all that remains is the comparably few histories that abide by the laws and forces of nature. Sum over histories indicates the direction of our ordinary clock time is simply a path in space which is more probable than the more exotic directions time might have taken otherwise. (Giorbran)

To date, the most comprehensible contemporary theory that combines general relativity and quantum theory is the No Boundary Proposal, presented by Stephen Hawking and Jim Hartle in the late 80s. They suggest that if we travelled back in time toward the beginning of the universe, time becomes so slow as to stop, leaving only space. Because

beginnings are concepts that deal with time, and because time did not exist before the Big

Bang, the concept of a beginning of the universe is insignificant (Hawking and Hartle 2960). Hawking writes of the No Boundary Proposal, "The universe would be completely self contained and not affected by anything outside itself. It would neither be created nor destroyed. It would just be” (Hawking and Hartle 2960).

A more recent take on quantum theory and the theory of relativity was presented by Wubbo Ockles, Dutch physicist and astronaut, in a TEDxAmsterdam talk8

in 2009. He argues humans as a species are chronocentric, believing their time is at the center of everything. He explains that the notion of time is solely a human construction resulting from the brain’s interpretation of the effects of gravity on the body, therefore different timescapes exist on different celestial bodies, i.e. alien life would experience their own version of time depending on their specific gravity. Using a scientific formula that calculates what our otoliths (structures in the inner ear sensitive to gravity and linear acceleration) experience compared to what our eyes experience, he claims our central nervous systems need to generate time in order to reconcile the difference. In his talk, he mentions that physicists have a hard time incorporating this concept, yet philosophers like Heidegger have already stated such a case—being and time determine each other reciprocally: “being causes time and time causes being” (Ockels TedxAmsterdam). This concept can clearly be connected back to both how ancient civilizations experienced time and spiritual conceptions of time.

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As one can discern from the multiple theories of scientific spatiotemporal perceptions, neither time nor space are fixed entities, and hence, are relative. If both the eternal present and the relative present paint a picture of time as a moment caused by being and not a linear continuum from past to future, how has the modern conception of time come into being? And further, what does the present look like in the current age of the digital? After voyaging through spiritual, scientific, physiological, and philosophical spaces and times at the speed of light, the reader can settle back to Earth and explore how space and time has been perceived socially throughout certain technological advances, and how the acceleration society, a compression of perceived time due to the increase and evolution of technology, is affecting one’s ability to be present in the present.

3.3 The Cybertime Present

While major scientific discoveries can be attributed to drastic shifts in our perception of space and time, there were two man-made inventions that not only shaped how people perceived space and time, but calculated and quantified it for them: the map and the clock (Carr 51). The map stored and transmitted logistical information about particular landscapes, but it also propelled society into a new arena of abstract thinking, “The intellectual process of transforming experience in space to abstraction of space is a revolution in modes of thinking,” writes Vincent Virga, an expert on cartography (Virga 5). The clock, on the other hand, now kept a steady track of time around which people began structuring their days. During the twelfth century, monasteries assembled the first mechanical clocks, as their days were regulated around times of prayer, work, mediation, reading, and rest (Loy 43). This desire for a scheduled day spread out to the royal courts of Europe, and kept spreading until, eventually, everyone had their own timepiece in their own house, or even kept it on their person, in which to keep rhythm with the rest of the townspeople (Carr 51);

The mechanical clock changed the way we saw ourselves. And like the map, it changed the way we thought. Once the clock had redefined time as a series of units of equal duration, our minds began to stress the methodical mental work of division and measurement. We began to see, in all things and phenomena, the pieces that composed the whole, and then we began to see the pieces of which the pieces were made. (Carr 52)

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Rewinding a bit, time in the pre-Socratic era was embodied by divine entities. Chronos was the name of a god who emerged from primordial Chaos to oversee the Ages. He represented the quantitative nature of time, measured by numbers. Instead, qualitative moments measured by human experience were represented by the god Kairos (Leong et al. 1269). On Tegenlicht9

, a Dutch documentary television program, Douglas Rushkoff, a media theorist, shared his perspective that we are a society addicted to chronos, the numbered time that is amplified by digital technology. He recounts a story from his childhood of having an analogue clock in his bedroom in which the second hand would move fluidly throughout the seconds of the clock. He fell asleep by staring at the second hand pass sinuously from one second to the next, one minute to the next. One day, his father bought him a digital clock, replacing the analogue one, and his experience of time was instantly altered. Instead of experiencing time as a sweeping flow from one moment to another, the digital clock held static for the whole 60 seconds until it suddenly jolted to the next minute. As we continue to shift from the “analogue industrial age society into this new very digital one” these abrupt changes in time become ever smaller, emphasizing chronos even more (Tegenlicht Rushkoff interview).

The immanence of the digital rose as personal computers emerged in the 80s, followed by the World Wide Web in the early 90s. After the crash of the Web 1.0 dot coms came Web 2.0, as a result of Silicon Valley having to re-invent itself in order to maintain its power in the world IT market (Lovink 13). Beginning with blogs, then with social media platforms, more and more features were introduced that “gradually allow[ed] for different forms of user participation,” enabling them to share links, create and exchange user-generated content (Gerlitz and Helmond 4), and connect more intimately with one another. In his article The archive and the processor: The internal logic of Web 2.0, Robert Gehl defines Web 2.0 as “the new media capitalist technique of relying upon users to supply and rank online media content, then using the attention this content generates to present advertisements to audiences” (Gehl 1229). It is through the emergence of Web 2.0 and the immediacy of exchanged information that the notion of real-time came about.

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3.3.1 The Rise of Real-Time!

Cybertime, in general, arises from the idea that the web is a temporal medium. Along with new communication technologies, different approaches have been used to describe the temporality of the web (Hassan 47). The debate around web time has recently focused on issues of “duration and the dissolving of time” (Weltevrede, Helmond, and Gerlitz 3), with varying opinions regarding the permanence and atemporality of the medium (Chun, Sterling). The concept of real-time, in particular, has become a focus of the debate surrounding cybertime, “The term real-time web was coined ‘to describe the exploding number of live social activities online, from tweets to status updates on Facebook to the sharing of news, Web links, and videos on myriad other sites’” (Hof businessweek.com). Real-time is a manifestation of a platform’s ability to become faster at assembling new content, allowing quicker and more efficient user interaction, particularly with the use of streaming. Streams update information automatically, bringing content to the user, so that the user does not have to handpick what is of interest to them from static webpages (Berry Stunlaw). Ironically, the immediacy that users experience is only possible through the processing power of vast server farms constructing long-term, archival potential— the paradox between the instantaneous and durable memory capacity is what propels the Web 2.0 (Gehl 1229).

With the rise of real-time, communication and information became transmitted in much quicker ways than anything experienced before. Spanish sociologist Manuel Castells wonders how a user’s experience is affected by this acceleration and proposes that constant access to information not only draws one’s attention solely on the present, but also isolates it from both future and past, creating a timeless time (Castells), which will be discussed further in Chapter 5. Thomas Eriksen, a Swedish scholar of information technology, notes a change in culture from the slow and linear to the fast and temporary. He contrasts the mp3 player to the CD, and the Web to the book, arguing that the information society manifests as torrents of decontextualized signs randomly linked to each other. The acceleration and growth of this indiscernible information causes what he calls “vertical stacking” of timespans that become shorter and shorter. Because of the radical increase of information one receives in the relatively constant amount of clock

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time they have, a decrease of attention span results (Eriksen 21, 22). From this particular viewpoint, as our attention span decreases, our sense of “now” becomes increasingly smaller, our thoughts of the past and future become increasingly narrow, but not in the all-encompassing eternal now of the Buddhist sense, but in a more frantic, anxiety-ridden manner. Loy chimes in to this argument, writing that the cyberpresent is a result of “slicing time so thinly that sense of duration disappears,” and while awareness normally jumps from one object to the next, it now does so at much more accelerated rate. Loy believes the constancy of the cyberpresence is a substitute to fulfill the sense of lack, the groundlessness “that shadows a constructed sense of self” (207).

Likewise, Virilio believes the past, present, and future of the traditional time continuum reduces to a tele-presence (or, a type of distant presence, a presence that is elsewhere) in cybertime which “cedes primacy to immediacy” (qtd. in Cook 16); the quiet important is pushed back behind the loud urgent. Time substitutes space and the geometrical value of coordinates is replaced by an audiovisual experience whose tele-presence draws more attention than real life experience, or, “the nature of facts” (ibid). Virilio believes “contemporary man no longer arrives at, achieves anything” and instead falls into “total performance syndrome,” taking us away from a meaningful here and now to a “time-world of the real instant” within the network (Virilio 143). This pessimistic view of the experience of time via new media technologies, the “fallen present,” as termed by Andrew Murphie, professor and author of Arts and Media, can be summarized in this passage;

[T[he state of sin into which the entire network society has fallen – contaminating everything and everyone. It brings “you” – as it transforms “you” into data and signal— remorselessly into the network via new technologies of mediation, biometry, and data surveillance. This is the present promoted by much of the commerce of network cultures and the present found in the promise of globalized, just-in-time production. We feel every day the constant fall into this present—a fall away from historical purpose or future hope (both substituted by short-term goals of improving immediate performance—the total performance syndrome). (Murphie 126)

From these accounts, there is now a switch in perspective: the present is being made inconsequential while the loss of the past and future is being mourned. But there is a difference between the present spoken of in the prior two sections, the now (as in “here

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and now”), and this one, the telenow or cyberpresent. The disparity can be analogized back to Petranker’s idea of lived story vs. told story referenced earlier in regards to Buddhism’s notion of presence and illusion (where presence indicates the lived story one experiences with the senses, and illusion as the told story that is experienced through thoughts one has about oneself). Petranker expands on this theme, calling the experience of the mishmash of our current temporalities “Frankentime,” and warns that by accepting this newfangled sense of time, our experience of life is diminished and “reduced to the stories we tell about it, [and we] absent ourselves from our lives” (180). British sociologist Anthony Giddens used the phrase “time-space distanciation” to describe how the increasing pace of modern life imbued with new technologies is “disembedding” us by collapsing the time-space axis (Giddens 125). French philosopher Bernard Stiegler also warns that engaging too closely with real-time networks can be dangerous, “not only for our sense of history but for our sense of everything, indeed for the very possibility of sense. In pursuing more of the present, we lose it completely” (qtd. in Murphie 125). Virilio restates these claims by suggesting we are no longer “see-ers” but “resee-ers,” no longer creating our own vision of the world but only seeing it recycled through others (qtd. in Cook 9) (incidentally, the very opposite of being mindful, where one observes something as if looking at if for the first time). This idea can be evidenced by viral videos and memes, the “share”-ability of posts, and the collective habits and social media norms that have developed on social media platforms. The user has increasingly become a reproducer of information rather than a unique contributor of content; indeed, even when the content is original, it is usually a reproduction of a format already made normal by social media standards, for example, the selfie.

Concluding from the discourses of the aforementioned theorists, media, especially new media, work hard to pull an individual out of the physical awareness of being and into a world of stories, whether it be one’s own personal story or the stories of friends, businesses, social affiliations, art worlds, etc. The image seen on the title page is a collage of pictures taken from participants involved with the empirical study I conducted for this thesis. In addition to filling out a questionnaire, they were asked to take pictures of what they saw in front of them, four times a day. Discerning from the pictures

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received, it is clear that people who own new media technologies tend to face screens throughout the majority of their day, whether it be the television, iPhone, iPad, laptop computer, desktop computer, etc. If one takes Virilio’s stance, then the screen is not a window in which an individual sees things for the first time, but is reflected back to them the thoughts, whims, desires, and attention-seeking of others.

While Virilio paints a negative picture, Rushkoff is more optimistic about the role tele-technologies are playing in society. In the Tegenlicht interview, he refers to the invention of the joystick and how it made the first videogame user feel empowered by enabling them to move an object on the screen. Next, the mouse and keyboard allowed users to create their own content on the screen, moving from a read/receive only medium to a deconstructed DIY. He argues this shift contributed to the breakdown of the narrative society. While some mourn this loss, Rushkoff says it’s for the best: no more blindly following the vision/storyline of men in power, ignoring the now for a fictional moment in the future (he cites Stalin and Hitler, also acknowledging more well-intentioned visionaries like Martin Luther King and Gandhi)— one can now create and follow their own stories. In the interview, Rushkoff admits that obliterating linear time for the synthetic, artificial time created by the digital can have its costs, such as the example of unmanned fighter pilots whose job it is to kill people remotely; these pilots end up with higher rates of post traumatic stress disorder than actual fighter pilots due to the discord of their everyday life and their remote killing missions. But he also sees the positives;

On the bright side, what that means, is we can disconnect from the, for the most part, false narrative about our civilization and our society: “Oh, the great journey that we’ve been on as a people, and our nation, and our conquest of all these others” and we can start to realize that real time has almost nothing to do with that kind of historic journey, and has everything to do with the moment that you’re in – that we’re living in a real time, in which you can reinvent yourself at any moment (Tegenlicht Rushkoff interview).

Returning to the rhetorical question I posed in the prologue of this thesis, is it possible to remain in the present when bombarded by multiple layers of recycled output? Teletechnologies are diminishing the experience of the present “by isolating it from its here and now, in favor of a communicative elsewhere that no longer has anything to do with our ‘concrete presence’ in the world, but is the elsewhere of a ‘discreet (sic)

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telepresence’ that remains a complete mystery” (Virilio 10 qtd. in Petranker 174). This stems from the idea that economic motives and the concept of “time is money” became the focal point of society after the clock was introduced and now holds even more accurate in today’s capitalist, highly industrialized world (Aveni 334-5), where time is no longer money—attention is. To further grasp this concept, I will discuss the acceleration society, attention economy, and the commodification of time in detail in the fifth chapter.

But how does all this discussion about cybertime relate to the matter at hand – being present in the now? Loy connects it back to the feeling of lack associated with Buddhism. From his perspective, because we have become a culture aligned more with achievement than affiliation, we experience great pressure to accomplish things, yet since we still identify with the individualized ego-self, which according to Buddhism “lacks any being or ground of its own,” we continue to seek perpetually, in vain, to feel secure. Satisfaction never comes (“lack still itches”), and so we develop more elaborate projects to pursue. Loy explains this is happening on a collective level too, stating a result of this phenomenon is society’s preoccupation with economic growth and technological development. As Rushkoff spoke to the end of the narrative society, so too writes Loy, however, more pessimistically, “This historical process has become all the more obsessive because it has lost any ideological end-point” (Loy 48).

I have thusly examined how the present is represented by analyzing space-time schémas across a variety of disciplines, including religious, scientific, sociological, and technological, and additionally, how being present manifests itself in each. In the next chapter I will examine western psychology’s interpretation of presence, or mindfulness, and the implications being mindful has upon the psyche. This examination will help to clarify why inquiring into mindfulness may or may not be fruitful when encountering the digital world, especially in regards to how one’s attention is being directed.

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4. The Implications of Being Mindful

In his article Buddha Philosophy and Western Psychology, Tapas Kumar Aich explains how Buddhist teachings first began being assessed by modern western psychology when British Indologist Rhys Davids translated Abhidhamma Pitaka from Pali and Sanskrit texts in 1900, entitling it Buddhist Manual of Psychological Ethics. She wrote another book in 1914 titled Buddhist Psychology: An inquiry into the analysis and theory of the

mind. Subsequently, in the mid-twentieth century, many teachers, clinicians, and writers

such as Carl Jung, Alan Watts, Erich Fromm, and Sharon Salzberg, collaborated with Buddhist scholars in an attempt to bridge psychology and Buddhism, as they recognized the overlap in theory and practice (Aich 4, 5). The main resemblance between both practices is in regard to bringing about “changes of consciousness, changes in our ways of feeling our own existence and our relation to human society and the natural world” (Aich 11).

In the last chapter, I explored the main accounts of the present according to several different fields of study and have indicated that mindfulness is one way of experiencing the present moment, among others. In this chapter, I will expand on the implications of mindfulness not just from a spiritual perspective, but also from a Western psychological perspective, as well as providing some critiques of the practice of mindfulness amongst Buddhists and scientists alike.

4.1 The Buddhist Perspective

We are used to thinking that the expression of individuality or the exaltation of individuality is one of the forms of man’s liberation. But I wonder if the opposite is true… Humanism does not work at all as a liberation of man, but on the contrary, works as imprisonment of man inside certain types of molds that are all controlled by the sovereignty of the subject. What I mean by ‘the end of man’ is the end of all these forms of individuality, of subjectivity, of consciousness, of the ego, on which we built and have tried to build and to constitute knowledge.

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Being mindful, as stated previously, is a nonjudgmental fully attentive observation of one’s experiences unfolding in the here and now. According to Paul Grossman and Nicholas T. Van Dam in their article Mindfulness, By Any Other Name: Trials and

Tribulations of Sati in Western Psychology and Science, mindfulness connotes several

features: “(1) deliberate, open-hearted awareness of moment-to-moment perceptible experience; (2) a process held and sustained by such qualities as kindness, tolerance, patience and courage (as underpinnings of a stance of nonjudgmentalness and acceptance); (3) a practice of nondiscursive, non-analytic investigation of ongoing experience; (4) an awareness markedly different from everyday modes of attention; and (5) in general, a necessity of systematic practice for its gradual refinement” (221). Mindfulness can be practiced at any time one chooses to place their attention on the present moment instead of engaging with the constant thought processes and judgments that are taking place within their mind. Most often, though, this practice takes place in the form of mediation called vipassana, in which the practitioner focuses on their breath while accepting incoming thoughts and perceptions without attachment. While practicing Buddhist mindfulness, the one who is doing the observing should not be the self, but instead should be the Self – the inner being of an individual that does not identify with personality, ego, fantasies, hopes, fears, etc. The goal in mindfulness practice is to quiet the never-ending, wandering thought processes that consist mostly of notions of the self—the “I”—and to arrive at a stillness that is not lacking, but in fact contains such a fullness of being as to be described as “action from non-action” (The Bhagavad Gita)— the feeling that you are complete without desiring anything other. In this state, one no longer has attachments to earthly things and at the same time feels connected to everything—one with all. If one succeeds at remaining in this state permanently, they are said to have reached nirvana, i.e., enlightenment (Mahathera 453).

The concept of samsara indicates an awareness that is bound while nirvana is awareness liberated, “when it does not ‘stop at’ or grasp at any particular thing, including any conceptual truth” (Loy 227). Samsara, as Loy mentions, is when our awareness is preoccupied with objects of desire, such as sex, love, food, money, success, etc., and when we understand the world from the narrow perspective of ourselves only. According

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to Loy, people tend to dwell in this state and get stuck into habitual ways of acting and thinking (Loy 228). The practice of mindfulness pulls a practitioner out of these personal dramas and reveals a more aware state of being, where everything that is simply is, without preconceived notions or attachments to meaning.

Loy describes the attachment to the ego-dominated self as groundlessness, a feeling that “there is something wrong with me,” and writes, “The need to feel more real, and the perpetual failure to achieve it, haunts the sense of self as a sense of lack” (ibid). The goal of mindfulness is not to find a ground on which to place one’s groundlessness, but to help one realize that awareness does not need a ground. When one plugs in fully to the present and accepts the groundlessness, they are liberated from space-time, and hence, find themselves in the eternal present. It is here that our non-self can feel complete deliverance (ibid). While the Buddhist implications of mindfulness mean a feeling of inner peace and a wholeness of being, there are also concrete psychological and physiological health benefits that come from a mindful state of being as researched by Western medicine. I will discuss these health benefits later, but first, it is important to consider the differences between Eastern and Western concepts of mindfulness.

4.2 Eastern vs. Western Concepts of Mindfulness

During the 60s and 70s there was an evolving interest in the field of experimental psychology examining diverse ways to heighten awareness and expand boundaries of consciousness, which included the practice of meditation (Keng, Smoski, and Robins 1041). Western medical and mental health practices adopted the term “mindfulness” from Buddhism in the early 70s and began applying the concept to psychological health contexts (Kabat-Zinn). There are three main differences between Eastern and Western ideas of mindfulness as outlined by Keng, Smoski, and Robins in their article Effects of

Mindfulness on Psychological Health.

The first difference is contextual. Mindfulness in the Buddhist context is just one aspect of an interconnected system of ideologies, practices, and traditions that are used to attain

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liberation from anatta, or, suffering (Keng, Smoski, and Robins 1041). This liberation is the ultimate goal of Buddhism, and practitioners use mindfulness practice, along with these other spiritual practices, as a means of attaining this goal. The Western concept of mindfulness lacks this practice-and-goal-oriented context and is independent from specific philosophies, traditions, ethical codes, or spiritual goals (ibid). The second difference lies in the actual practice. In Buddhist mindfulness, one is encouraged to ruminate on aspects of Buddhist teachings, such as impermanence (nothing is permanent), transience (everything is in a state of flux), and equanimity (a state of mind that is undisturbed by emotions). The Western perspective, instead, is not set against a religious backdrop, and spiritual concepts are less emphasized (ibid). The third difference is related to the previous one in which mindfulness in Buddhist teachings refers to an introspective awareness of one’s psychological and physiological processes and experiences, whereas Western conceptualization of mindfulness views the practice as a form of attention encompassing all objects in one’s external and internal experience, including sensory objects like smells and sights (ibid).

4.3 Western Psychology Perspective

Mindfulness, from the Western psychology perspective, focuses less on spiritual facets and more on aspects of non-judgment and attention. Descriptions of mindfulness taken from several Western medical articles include, “non-evaluative awareness and focus on the present,” “a flexible state of consciousness that encompasses open and receptive attention and awareness of both one’s inner state and the outside world (Brown and Ryan 822; Brown, Ryan, and Creswell 211),” and “nonjudgemental [sic] acceptance of one’s moment-to-moment experience (Hayes and Feldman 255),” in which “each moment is viewed as unique, and if one brings to the moment preconceived ideas, one will not be able to experience the moment as it truly is” (Bishop et al. 230). Having this impartial perspective on the present allows an individual to react effectively to their experiences (Bishop et al.; Kabat-Zinn), minimizing habitual behavior and encouraging a conscious response (Kabat-Zinn).

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Ever since the concept of being present came into Western consciousness, the field of psychology has seen a swell of interest in mindfulness as a psychological construct and as a method of clinical intervention (Keng, Smoski, and Robins 1041). This research was pioneered by Jon Kabat-Zinn, who began by exploring the use of mindfulness practice in patients experiencing chronic pain (Keng, Smoski, and Robins 1043). Many studies have since been conducted which explore the effects of mindfulness on psychological wellbeing.

In general, having the quality of mindfulness was associated with greater subjective wellbeing (Baer et al.; Brown et al.; Brown and Ryan; Falkenstrom). According to one study, higher levels of mindfulness are associated with “greater emotional intelligence, positive affect, and life satisfaction and lower negative affect (Schutte and Malouff 1116). Another study reports that higher levels of mindfulness are associated with “better mental health, greater relationship satisfaction, and more effective management of pain” (Brown, Ryan, and Creswell 211). The list of positive affects associated with mindfulness continues, including, but not limited to: more adaptive emotional functioning (Mayer, Salovey, and Caruso; Salovey and Mayer); increased emotional competencies such as perceiving, understanding, managing emotions effectively (ibid); enhanced cognitive flexibility (Hodgins and Adair; Moore and Malinowski); agreeableness (Thompson and Waltz); vitality (Brown and Ryan); conscientiousness (Giluk; Thompson and Waltz), empathy (Dekeyser et al.); esteem (Brown and Ryan; Rasmussen and Pidgeon); self-discipline (Baer and Bowlin); competence (Brown and Ryan); sense of autonomy (Brown and Ryan); optimism (Brown and Ryan); self-compassion (Lykins and Baer); enhanced performance on tasks assessing sustained attention (Schmertz, Anderson, and Robins) and persistence (Evans et al.).

In addition, studies have also revealed that high levels of mindfulness are negatively correlated with such qualities including, but not limited to, depression (Brown and Ryan; Cash and Whittingham); social anxiety (Brown and Ryan; Dekeyser et al.; Rasmussen and Pidgeon); absentmindedness (Herndon); dissociation (Baer et al.; Walach et al.); cognitive reactivity (Raes et al.), neuroticism (Dekeyser et al.; Giluk), rumination (Raes

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and Williams), difficulties in emotion regulation (Baer et al.), experiential avoidance (Baer et al.); intensity of psychosis (Chadwick et al.); and negative thought and thought suppression (Evans et al.).

In the article Mindfulness Skills and Interpersonal Behavior by Mathias Dekeyser, Filip Raes, Mia Leijssen, Sara Leysen, and David Dewulf, the nature of mindfulness and its relationship to interpersonal feelings and performance is explored (1235). In a study they conducted, they found all elements of mindfulness (observation, description, action with awareness, and acceptance without judgment (Baer et al.)) were positively associated with expressing oneself in social situations. The higher the mindful observation the more engagement in empathy; mindful description, acting with awareness, and accepting without judgment were associated with better feeling identification, less social anxiety, more body satisfaction, and less distress contagion (Dekeyser et al. 1243). Since mindfulness practices involve sustaining attention on the present moment, as well as being able to switch back to the awareness of the present whenever the mind wanders, mindfulness training is said to improve the ability to control attention, which may also have an effect on other valuable psychological results (Bishop et al.). Other implications of mindfulness on certain aspects of attention include increased ability to direct and sustain attention toward an object, increased ability to remain vigilant toward a wide range of potential stimuli, and increased ability to prioritize attention among competing insistences (Posner and Peterson).

4.3.1 Mindfulness and New Media Practices

Previous research has shown that people low in trait mindfulness (trait mindfulness being an inherent inclination toward mindfulness vs. mindfulness gained through practice) exhibit problems with emotion-regulation (Arch and Craske 2010; Baer et al.; Creswell et al.; Feldman et al.) and attention-regulation (Schmert, Anderson, and Robin). Personality traits characterized by difficulty in emotion regulation, like impulsivity and neuroticism, are linked with greater frequency of texting (Butt and Phillips; Ehrenberg et al.) and use of mobile phones in prohibited and dangerous circumstances (Billieux et al.).