Yesterday we heard from the brilliant Tom Chatfield; digital commentator and author of four books exploring digital culture, including latest How to Thrive in a Digital Age, (to read this interview click here). Today, Tom enlightens us about our growing dependence on technology, the pros and cons of social networking and his personal journey as a writer...

Tom, with regards to some of the ideas outlined in the book; do you think we are getting too dependent on technology? Is thriving also about limiting our dependence?

To be human is to be dependent on technologies in almost every aspect of our lives: from clothing and transport to medicine, food production, media, and so on. When it comes to digital technologies, I believe it’s not so much about seeking to break an imagined “dependence” as you might try to escape a dangerous diction – I think this extremely loaded kind of language can bring problems with it, such as the urge to definitively label technologies as “bad” and “good”. Rather, it’s about balancing digital media and modern technologies alongside all the other opportunities available to us in our lives, and not mistaking the particular logic of digital media for a universal law of existence.

Social media sites are often credited as bringing people closer to each other, but they are just as often criticised for creating anti-social behaviour. What's your viewpoint? 

Without wanting to be too simplistic, it’s all about how you use them: what kinds and qualities of experience they create for you. Social media can be thought of as a kind of magnifying lens applied to human nature: we can be more sociable, more altruistic and inclusive and sharing in many ways; and we can also more easily cause harm, take advantage of people, lie and deceive. With power comes temptation, and I think there’s a great need for rather more formal and informal education exploring what it means to use social media well – and what it feels like to be on the negative end of apparently consequence-free abuse and so on. We need to grow up in our attitude to social media, as a society; as ever, technology’s possibilities are leaping several year ahead of social norms and analysis, and it takes time for the world to catch up with its tools.?

In your column "Rethinking the social network", you reveal that, though massively popular, social networks are not anywhere near replacing text messaging in terms of means of contact. Why do you think this is? Will social networks replace it in the future, or will texting always be the main means of contacting our inner networks?

I’m interested in text messages because they speak of our need for many different kinds of communication. Social media are powerful, public, quite promiscuous; text messages are incredibly pared-down and personal. They’re more about accessing and making ourselves accessible to a trusted “inner network” in our lives – and the fact that they’re the planet’s single biggest form of written social mediation speaks volumes for the continuing need to different registers of intimacy and contact. Something like texting – that asks so little of us, that is so convenient and rapid – will always be with us, I think.

With the birth of online social networking services, socialising has been revolutionised. Similarly, with the advances of technology and worldwide connectivity, many universities and schools now offer entirely web-based modules and courses. Do you think that campus-based education can ever be completely replaced by computer interaction?

Not completely, no. But large elements of it clearly can be replaced – even bettered. When I look at a lot of online lectures, from the Khan Academy to TED and beyond, much of this is simply better than many lectures given live and universities; and it can be rewound, paused, offered with a translation and a transcript, and so on. Physical libraries, similarly, are in a very different position than they were even a decade ago, given how much top quality work can be found and searched online. So the question for me is not whether campuses will vanish entirely – but what it is they can continue to offer, and must offer more of, if they wish to remain at the cutting edge of excellence. Community is of course one of these things; as is a physical environment which facilitates both study and discovery; and anything requiring research in labs, using physical facilities, and so on. Given the costs of attending a campus university, though, I think a lot of courses and institutions - especially at the lower end – are facing a huge challenge to justify their continued existence in their current form.

You've been described by your publishers as a 'leading mind in your field' could you tell us a bit about your journey - how you got into writing (particularly the focus on digital and the web)...

That’s very kind! I always wanted to write, from when I was very young, and wrote poetry, fiction and drama from a young age. But I also loved the idea of books that explained things – that talked about what it meant to be alive, now, and how things worked, and had got to be the way they are. I was also always someone who loved both words and numbers: I spent much of my spare time as a child and teenager reading books, programming on my computer, and playing video games. After my undergraduate degree I ended up doing a doctorate and teaching literature, with a big of philosophy thrown in, but had retained a strong interest in technology. I started to collaborate a little with friends working on games and digital projects – and I decided that I didn’t want to stay at university, but wanted to be a part of the business of trying to describe the present day. This led me towards editing and journalism, and increasingly pulled my writing towards what you might call the philosophy of technology: why and how technology is changing our lives and society (and what isn’t actually that new at all). I wrote a book about video games, a book about new media and politics, a book about digital ideas, my book for the School of Life on what it means to use technology well – and now find myself happily able to devote most of my time to writing, speaking and teaching on these themes, as well as working with companies I respect on projects ranging from games to education initiatives. But it’s writing I love above all: explaining things, trying to play a very small part in improving the way we talk about what it means to be alive today.

The School of Life is an incredible resource, how has it changed your life in particular?

I love the School for many reasons, but perhaps the best aspect of it is the people I get to meet. On the one hand, there are my fellow faculty-members, with whom I do some events – and, especially for someone who is self-employed, it’s such a privilege to have the company of interesting colleagues whom I respect and can learn from. Then there are the people who come to my classes. A lot of the teaching I do at the School is fairly intensive, seminar-style stuff, with groups of only around twenty or so: and I never quite know what themes are going to come up, what people are going to be interested in, challenge me on, offer from their own experience, or enjoy. It’s a kind of engagement that keeps me feeling fresh, and that has taught me a huge amount.

With regards to the extensive research involved in writing the book; how did you go about it?

At root, writing the book came from my close readings of a huge stack of other books by people I respect (there’s a pretty extensive bibliography); and from my conversations and encounters with people across the world of technology and research. I’m lucky enough to do a fair amount of speaking on what you might call the tech conference circuit, so I get exposed to a lot of fantastic people and ideas. This book is an attempt to distil the themes and ideas I’ve found most exciting over the last few years: it’s short, accessible, and I hope an impetus to further reading and thinking on the part of readers, rather than just being an account that you read and then put down. I’d like to imagine people scribbling in the margins, eager to find out more – it’s more a compendium of sparks of knowledge than an attempt to be comprehensive or have the last word on anything.

What in summary does 'thriving in a digital age' involve?

If there’s one thing I’d emphasize, it’s the lesson that no technology is simply a neutral tool. All technologies are systems, encoding certain biases and pressures: they make some things easier and more likely, some things harder and less likely. Thriving in a digital age means being able to look dispassionately at some of the pressures the digital tools we are using every day subject us to – from the pressure to send and receive emails endlessly, no matter where we are, to the pressure to perform via social media in order to feel better about ourselves, or the pressure to upgrade gadgets for the sake of it, or never allow ourselves “unplugged” time. And then it means looking at what it is we wish to get out of life – what we ourselves want to do – and starting to adapt our use of technology in order to make it work better for us, rather than simply finding ourselves serving its “needs” without ever asking whether they coincide with our own happiness or not.

Read Part One here.

Interview by Alice Kahrmann

August 2012.