Book: A Deadly Wandering by Matt Richtel

Note: Yes, I know. Hearing about what books other people are reading is so boring. Feel free to go watch a YouTube video about cats or peruse Facebook posts which show videos of people dumping ice water on their heads instead. Go ahead. I won't mind. 

I read books. No, really, I do. Well, I read them eventually in many cases. Often, I'll read 1/3, 1/2, or even 2/3 then a new book will come along and I'll start to read it. The Japanese have a word that almost describes this (tsundoku). However, I think it refers to books that are never read at all so I guess I'm a little bit beyond that.

Given this tendency, it surprised me when I tore through A Deadly Wandering by Matt Richtel in a mere three days. At one point, as I read on, I realized that I'd read something by him on the same theme as the book before. He has written a fair amount for the New York Times and I at one point heard part of an article he'd done about attention. That is, at least in part, what this book is all about.

I don't want to spoil A Deadly Wandering by talking about its contents much. I can say as much as the blurb on the book which is that the story of the tragic death of two rocket scientists (honestly, that's what their jobs were - that's not sarcasm) in a traffic accident is used as a means of talking about the perils of media use. I will hasten to add that the book is not alarmist in the way it deals with the subject. It's incredibly pragmatic and talks about the science behind the issue rather than merely being critical of those darn kids who can't un-glue their thumbs from their cell phones.

The book fleshed out some things which I have suspected for some time and that I'm sure made me sound like an utter curmudgeon. It has been my impression that the internet has shortened attention spans as well as damaged the ability of people to have good relationships with others. The former is addressed in A Deadly Wandering. The latter is being addressed in another book that I'm still working on (but am getting through far more slowly). The bottom line is that our brains are being re-wired by technology. We know this for certain through the magic of other technology - not the sort that rewires your brain, but the magical sort that sends little fairy particles all through your body and tells the nice doctor people which parts of your gray matter are being tickled by various experiences.

A Deadly Wandering does a great job of weaving all of this science stuff into a story in such a way that you're willing to read it. When I say "you", I actually mean "you" and not the more general "you" that includes me. I'm happy to read about brain chemicals all of the time. While I'll read it faster if a super, duper, uber-talented guy like Matt Richtel writes about it such that it is hard to put down, I'll read it with the speed of a determined tortoise even if it's less well-written.

Everyone should read A Deadly Wandering. Every potential parent should have to read it and take a test proving he and/or she has read it and comprehended it before fertilization takes place. It doesn't have a message, but the inescapable conclusion is that people need to stop thinking they can do two things at once because they can't. Their brains switch off between tasks, not perform them simultaneously. If you try to do two things at once and one of them is dangerous, something bad is likely to happen. If it hasn't already, then it probably will in the future.

I once watched a documentary about a woman who worked in a book-binding shop for small run publications. This was some time ago and she worked in front of a machine that chopped the pages to fit the binding. She pushed a book in and a super sharp blade came down and chopped the pages. Then, she pulled the pages out. She'd repeat this process. The job was very tedious. One day, she got distracted and allowed her mind to wander. She looked over at the book binding area and saw four strange white things on the cutter. She wondered what those odd things were. She soon figured out that they were her fingers.

The woman in this documentary had no memory of putting her hand in the machine or having her fingers severed. This is what happens when people think they can attend to two things at once. They actually switch away from one task then switch back to the other. She was "lucky" because the blade was so sharp and cut through so cleanly that she had no pain. She also was able to have the fingers re-attached and regained most of the use of them because the nerve endings were cut cleanly (the documentary was about re-attached body parts). This woman tried to focus on two things at once because one was really boring and the consequences were horrible.

The same happened in A Deadly Wandering. Someone tried to do two things at once and focused on the more interesting task and wasn't paying attention to the boring, dangerous one. And the consequences were horrible. Everyone likes to think he or she is special and has the capacity to multi-task above and beyond that of others. Research shows that almost no one is special in this way, and then bad things happen. The book will convince you of this reality, though it likely won't change your behavior because even when people know the facts, they still act like idiots and think they're somehow immune to the consequences. Read the book and at least understand why you're doing something is a utterly irresponsible and reckless idea that might ruin someone's life (including your own).