A Deadly Wandering

“At the same time, such technology—from the television to the computer and phone—can put pressure on the brain by presenting it with more information, and of a type of information, that makes it hard for us to keep up. That is particularly true of interactive electronics, delivering highly relevant, stimulating social content, and with increasing speed. The onslaught taxes our ability to attend, to pay attention, arguably among the most important, powerful, and uniquely human of our gifts.” 

Technology’s allure—its ability to deliver an infinite stream of personally tailored information—is what makes it so dangerous, as the hard science in later chapters will argue. The incredibly advanced technology that humans have made is so engrossing that we can’t stay away from it, even when our lives depend on doing so. 

“This was the marriage of Moore and Metcalfe—the coming together of processing power and personal communications—our gadgets becoming faster and more intimate. They weren’t just demanding attention but had become so compelling as to be addictive.” 

Moore’s Law states that the processing capabilities of computers will double approximately every two years. Metcalfe’s Law defines the power of a computer network as the square of the number of people using it. The fact that we derive more value from the larger networks (such as social networks like Facebook, which a sizable percentage of the global population uses) means it is more likely we will be addicted, in that there is both an individual desire to use the network and, for many, a perceived social obligation to do so.

“For all the gifts of computer technology, if its power goes underappreciated, it can hijack the brain.” 

The advantages of tech can blind us to its disadvantages. Reggie Shaw certainly had no intention of harming anyone on the day of his accident, and it seems fair to say that he was not being intentionally negligent; rather, his own mind was unaware of how immersed in technology (his cell phone) he was. 

“In short, attention is extremely powerful and extremely limited. That idea, as embodied by the cocktail party effect, is fundamental to modern attention science, and it seems so obvious. But it was quite revelatory in the middle of the nineteenth century. Up to that point, there was a general belief that the brain was ‘infinite’ in its power to take in and process the world.” 

Just as it was hard in the 20th century to imagine a time when the brain’s limits were not obvious, so it is hard to realize when reading this book post-2018, now that texting and driving has been thoroughly stigmatized, that there was also a time before the dangers of texting while driving were fully understood and appreciated. 

“The researchers realized that the machines people were building—those mechanized tools of productivity, war, and science—were so powerful that they were moving faster than people could keep up. This was a defining moment. Scientists were putting new technology to work to understand the capacities and limits of the human brain at the very moment that technology was putting those limits into sharp relief.” 

This historical perspective on post-industrial life gives readers a window into the first time that technology began to evolve at a speed that was difficult to comprehend and stop. In many ways, the success of technological advancement is also the story of the inability of humans to keep up fast enough to see the pitfalls of new technology before it was too late.

“As the technology evolved, it had almost competing roles. It was simultaneously leading to tools that would make humans so much more powerful, and at the same time, it was making humans seem less powerful, certainly slower, than they’d ever been.” 

The fundamental problem with rapidly advancing technology is that it can simultaneously make humans more efficient than ever (in science and communication) and also more prone to error through its complete hijacking of our cognition, as evidenced in the case of Reggie Shaw. 

“Put another way, technology was evolving by the day, but the human brain was more or less staying put.” 

Developments in computing technology through the 20th century created an unforeseen problem: While we could build amazingly fast and adept machines that we could control, we were firmly limited by the fact that we couldn’t upgrade our own biological hardware.

“Of late, the magician has Dr. Gazzaley thinking about distraction. It’s not exactly the opposite of attention. But it is an antagonist to attention.” 

The book makes an important and subtle distinction: While not binary in their relationship to one another, distraction functions as villain to attention’s role as hero. 

“They were running up against the limits of their own brains. ‘Technology was outstripping cognitive capacity,’ Dr. Atchley explains. ‘We could quantify the machine, but not the human. That’s where cognitive neuroscience really started.’” 

Atchley is making the point that cognitive neuroscience emerged out of a crisis in World War II. Human error was leading to lives being lost due to the lack of the ability on the part of the human brain to not become distracted.

“There is a tension going on inside the brain. It is a tug-of-war between two different aspects of the attention system, one called ‘bottom-up attention’ and the other called ‘top-down attention.’” 

These two levels of attention are important for later understanding why computers, phones, and televisions can so completely overtake our systems, almost to the point of short-circuiting them, sometimes with deadly consequences. Anything that can usurp both aspects of our attention system at once should be viewed as exceptionally dangerous to driving.

“Technology companies are trying to get more of our brains per unit time. It’s as close to a business model as you can imagine. The more engaged you are in what they create, the more successful they are.” 

Another cause of our existence within a technological prison is that our brain’s proclivity for communication and social interaction has been co-opted by a capitalist system eager to profit by preying on our biology. Corporations spends billions annually on deciphering ways to make tech more immersive. 

“A hypothesis born out of the Princeton work is that attention is a finite resource: Focusing on one source (a person, a mobile device, the road ahead of you, etc.) comes at the cost of lost awareness of everything else. If that hypothesis holds, we face real challenges when we focus on a phone while driving; we can’t just will ourselves to concentrate on both things because our brains are designed to put a huge emphasis on what we deem relevant information, to the point of suppressing brain activity devoted to something else.”

Texting while driving is fundamentally different from other activities in the car like changing the radio station or eating. Our minds cannot help but make texting the most important thing in that moment—whereas we can always focus away from the music or sandwich in our laps. Tech bypasses our attention-switching pathways.

“She thinks: Why spend all of our time fixing problems when we can perhaps devote a little time to preventing them in the first place?” 

The way county attorney Scott Wyatt describes Terryl’s ethos when it comes to cases—organizing meetings with religious leaders to take the stigma out of family abuse—also applies to the larger problem of distracted driving. We can minimize accidents with effective laws, as long as society accepts such regulation. 

“Getting information of value seems to explain some of the powerful lure of technology. Here, it is possible to see the way in which our devices play so beautifully to our two basic attention systems: top-down and bottom-up. Our top-down, goal-directed system wants to keep in touch, make connections, form relationships, forge partnerships. Our devices are masterful at allowing that. And the goals get reinforced, or so it seems, by the buzz of an incoming call or text, alerting us to a new development in the narrative of our lives. It is the bottom-up system at work.” 

Unlike other stimuli in the environment, communication technologies like cell phones engage both of our attention systems simultaneously and seamlessly. We are primed to seek out social interaction, so we gravitate to the phones, which enable this so easily; and our brains can’t help but want the rush of the intermittent reward that cell phone rings and buzzes generate—we believe that each text could be something important, though it almost never is.

“What’s happening today with technology, he argues, is comparable to what happened in the seventies with drugs. ‘It’s exactly the same, the pace of adoption of technology and cultural acceptance isn’t that much different than the pace of adoption and cultural acceptance of the drug culture, except that one is legal and one isn’t.’" 

Though many of his colleagues in the academic community do not share Dr. David Greenfield’s view of technology addiction, he makes many compelling points about its similarities with drug abuse and other addictive behaviors. 

“There is a pointed parallel to personal communications technology. In the same way we crave food, we crave connection. Not just for its own sake but because connection is essential for survival. It helps us form networks, understand sources of opportunity or threat, create alliances, fight enemies. It is primal.” 

Our relationship with food is a useful comparison to technology from the point of view of the scientific community. We have a deep biological craving for communication in the same way we crave food. Both are essential hard-wired survival instincts.

“The experience made a profound impression on him that led him to think twice about the difference between spirituality and religion, between faith and the institutions that deliver its message.” 

Linton’s perspective on spirituality mirrors Reggie’s journey with his faith and beliefs. Linton reconciles his childhood sexual abuse with his spirituality by separating the institution of the Mormon Church from its teachings, just as Reggie would go on to see his seemingly secular work as a texting-while-driving educator as a kind of mission.

“It was another sign of the interesting role Reggie was playing. Depending on a person’s life experience, they saw Reggie and his actions in slightly different lights. Baird saw Reggie’s case one way, Linton another. Such was the razor’s edge of right and wrong that texting and driving played at the time; it seemed possible to view Reggie and his actions through different lenses. Over time, Reggie would become both a lightning rod and a prism through which people in the community, prosecutors, legislators, and others around the country would view themselves and their own behavior.” 

Reggie serves two major roles in the book: a lightning rod to effect policy change and a prism for the people around him to understand both themselves and the world more fully.

“It didn’t matter. Bunderson didn’t know that the case was already over. Reggie, still showing nothing on his face, could no longer deny it: He, his texting, had killed Jim Furfaro and Keith O’Dell.”

In this crucial moment, Reggie confronts and accepts his own unconscious awareness of his wrongdoing. It will allow him to take a plea deal to serve a few weeks in jail and become a public speaker for the dangers of distracted driving.

“This case, he was saying, happened on a razor’s edge. Some wanting charges, others not, but all of them, in one way or another, seeing themselves in Reggie, viewing this tiny moment in time as a projection of how they would’ve handled themselves, or have. His attention, ours, is so fragile. It can happen to anyone. Can any of us be expected to know the consequences of actions that feel so close to mere accident?”

Reggie’s case has far-reaching implications. So many drivers have and continue to text while driving that it’s probably not a stretch to say that most assume they can multitask in this manner without any repercussions for themselves or others. The book attempts to show that at a neurological level, this simply isn’t the case. 

“One could make a strong case that no single person has made as much of a difference when it comes to sending the message about the risks of texting and driving.” 

At this moment, the book fully redeems Reggie, who atones for his past actions through his public-service work, following his trial and plea arrangement. 

“Terryl seemed to have developed, and passed on, a deep moral authority, despite her tragic childhood, or maybe because of it, that seemed to have more depth and breadth than the institutions and conventional leanings around her.”

There is a big difference between belief-based morality and the societal institutions that are supposed to uphold it. Terryl’s family unit was anything but familial, but despite her negative experiences, she instilled in herself and others positive morality. Linton is able to do the same thing: Despite being sexually abused by a member of the church when he was young, he holds on to the moral strictures he values. 

“Telling the truth to others is often the easier part, the confrontation. The harder part usually is telling the truth to yourself.” 

Being truthful with oneself about one’s experiences is the crux of the personal journey for many of the figures in the book, especially Reggie.