A nation of tech addicts

(Editor's note: The following column appeared in the March 24, 2017 issue of the Finger Lakes Times in Geneva, NY.)

A nation of tech addicts

By Michael J. Fitzgerald

The U.S. is becoming — or perhaps has become — a nation of addicts.

And not the usual suspect addictions: drugs, cigarettes or alcohol.

Electronics, products of the digital age, are hooking nearly everyone, every age, every demographic. And this addiction helps to create and sustain multi-billion dollar industries to keep the addictions going and growing.

That’s among the conclusions of Adam Alter’s new best-selling book “Irresistible: The Rise of Addictive Technology and the Business of Keeping Us Hooked.”

How hooked?

If you just stopped reading this column to check your smartphone, email, Facebook, or peeked at Twitter to see if President Donald Trump lit up another head of state in the last 10 minutes, you fit the book’s problem profile.

The ability to concentrate on a single task for even a short length of time is a casualty of the digital age.

“In the 1960s, we swam through waters with only a few hooks: cigarettes, alcohol and drugs that were expensive,” he writes. “In the 2010s, those same waters are littered with hooks ... the Facebook hook ... the Instagram hook ... the online shopping hook ... We’re only just learning the power of these hooks.”

The hooks he writes about are behavioral addictions, harder to spot than substance abuse. They are particularly prevalent in younger people who have grown up immersed in a dazzling array of digital shiny baubles.

But the young are not alone.

Alter includes binge-watching television among problem areas for many people. Ditto the video game World of Warcraft, considered one of the most addictive video games ever created. It’s played by young and old alike.

The aggressive customer-snaring strategies of companies providing the hardware and software for this endless digital stream should give pause, too.

The problem isn’t necessarily the willpower of the user, Alter says. “It’s that there are a thousand people on the other side of the screen whose job it is to break down the self-regulation you have.”

It’s quite telling that the late Steve Jobs of Apple would not let his children use an iPad, one of Apple’s signature products.

Similar stories are relayed in the book about other high-tech giants like the former editor of Wired Magazine and one of the founders of Blogger, Medium and Twitter.

“It seemed as if the people producing tech products were following the cardinal rule of drug dealing: never get high on your own product.”

Residents of the Finger Lakes are certainly not immune to the electronic and social media addictions detailed out in “Irresistible.”

But the region has a secret weapon for keeping use of the digital world in balance: the great outdoors.

Recent studies show that silence — something that’s relatively easy to obtain in the Finger Lakes — is an amazingly powerful tonic for restoring frayed nerves and to boost energy and spirits.

That’s true silence. Not just turning off the Twitter app on your smartphone or leaving your busy office to stand in the parking lot.

True silence is getting out in nature where natural sounds eclipse any man-made noise that keeps people constantly on guard.

The need for this kind of mental rehab was noted in the “Harvard Business Review” last Friday.

“Real sustained silence, the kind that facilitates clear and creative thinking, quiets inner chatter as well as outer,” wrote authors Leigh Marz and Justin Talbot-Zorn. “It’s about taking a temporary break from one of life’s most basic responsibilities: Having to think what to say.”

Though “Irresistible” paints a portrait of a nation in digital distress, Alter is optimistic about dealing with digital behavioral addictions.

“If app designers can coax people to spend more time and money on a smartphone game, perhaps policy experts can also encourage people to save more for retirement or donate more to charities.”

They could also suggest people go out and breathe some fresh air, too. Finger Lakes air is some of the best in the land.

Fitzgerald worked for six newspapers as a writer and editor as well as a correspondent for several news services. He splits his time between Valois, NY and Pt. Richmond, Calif. You can email him at Michael.Fitzgeraldfltcolumnist@gmail.com and visit his website at michaeljfitzgerald.blogspot.com.

One New York Congressman's rocky road to 2018

(EDITOR'S NOTE: The following column appeared in the March 17, 2017 Finger Lakes Times newspaper in Geneva, NY.)

By Michael J. Fitzgerald, FLT columnist

New York Congressman Tom Reed has been taking some serious licks in recent weeks in appearances at town halls around the district, with most attendees barely able to contain their pique at his support of the GOP plan to blindly repeal the Affordable Care Act, better known as Obamacare.

Draconian immigration policies, defunding of Planned Parenthood and possible cuts in Social Security and Medicare are also part of a potpourri of issues being raised.

But in addition to those concerns, Reed faced criticism at a packed session in Ovid, NY last weekend by audience members who said he doesn’t listen enough to constituents.

His classic politician’s response drew a chorus of boos and catcalls.

“I represent 717,000 people,” Reed said. “I try to listen to that silent voice.”

If “silent voice” sounds faintly familiar, it’s because it’s a spin on the term “silent majority,” a phrase late-former President Richard Nixon used in a 1969 speech aimed at quieting protests over his handling of the Vietnam War.

Variations of the phrase get dragged out by politicians to lay claim to invisible support for often unpopular positions.

Reed’s problem today is that many of the silent voices that might have unwaveringly supported him in the past are now standing in front of him at town hall meetings demanding to know what exactly is going to happen to their health care.

Platitudes that the newly elected GOP-controlled federal government will simply take care of everything are being met with a roiling mix of skepticism and increased cynicism.

To his credit, at least Reed has been willing to step in front of some pretty angry groups across the sprawling 23rd Congressional district, unlike many of his colleagues. In many other districts across the nation, GOP congressmen are playing duck and cover rather than standing in front of constituents to answer questions about why the GOP wasn’t ready with a plan to replace the ACA the day the new government took office.

But Reed’s generally vague answers — coupled with claims that silent voices in the background count more than people who turn out at town halls — is not a winning strategy for reelection in 2018.

And that’s what these town halls are all about — re-election.

Reed coasted through the last two re-elections while the GOP was spending the majority of its time blocking any progress on any front — a strategy that appealed to anti-Obama, anti-Democratic voters.

Town halls were a big part of Reed’s campaigning, with generally less-strident, less-confrontational audiences willing to listen to his platform palaver about how terrible Obama and the federal government were.

But now that the GOP has the reins of the entire federal budget and the bureaucracy is in its political grasp, citizens are justifiably asking what the GOP plan is about health care.

And everything else.

Eight years of being obstructionists seems to have induced GOP mental atrophy except for the destruction of federal agencies, repealing regulations and regulatory authority in the process.

Removal of clean water and clean air regulations, for example, could spell environmental disaster for the Finger Lakes.

Ditto for any national immigration policy that could discourage legal immigrant workers from working for local farms and vineyards.

The town halls are likely to get even more raucous and confrontational, unless Reed and his House of Representatives’ GOP colleagues quickly put on their thinking caps and come up with some real plans for real progress and not simply try to revoke the social and fiscal progress of last century.

When the electoral/voting clock chimes on Nov. 6, 2018, the silent — and not-so-silent — voices are likely to speak with a unified voice.

Fitzgerald worked for six newspapers as a writer and editor as well as a correspondent for several news services. He splits his time between Valois, NY and Pt. Richmond, Calif. You can email him at Michael.Fitzgeraldfltcolumnist@gmail.com and visit his website at michaeljfitzgerald.blogspot.com.

Public comment - New York versus Richmond

(Editor's note: The following article was published Friday, March 10 by the Finger Lakes Times of Geneva, NY... It contrasts the difference in elected officials' attitudes about public comment at meetings between the City of Richmond and Seneca Falls, NY, the birthplace of the women's suffrage movement.)

The law that Seneca Falls, New York really needs

By Michael J. Fitzgerald, FLT columnist

   The town of Seneca Falls needs to adopt a new local law, one that requires the town board to include a robust public comment segment at all public town meetings.

     In the week prior to the just-completed regularly scheduled town board meeting, the chairman — elected town Supervisor Greg Lazzaro — declared there would be no public comments allowed at the session.

    About anything.

    He opined that any speakers would likely want to comment on a proposed law — Local Law 2 — designed to negate Local Law 3, which was adopted in December 2016. Because the town has a public hearing scheduled on Local Law 2, he said comments at the just-past meeting would be repetitive and clutter the board’s busy agenda.

    It’s hard to measure how prescient the town supervisor might be about what the public would want to comment on.

    But his precognitive abilities are irrelevant.

    Whatever town of Seneca Falls’ citizens want to say about town matters are the heart of participatory democracy and the democratic process itself.

    The Town Board was elected to work in the best interests of the people, by the people and for the people of the town.

    That includes listening to what citizens have to say, not just processing sewer, water and planning concerns at once-a-month meetings.

    By contrast, last month at a Richmond, Calif., City Council meeting, dozens of local residents offered up thoughts, suggestions, criticisms — and even a smattering of praise.

    The City Council’s policy encourages public comment on every action item on its agenda, with speakers limited to two minutes of verbiage, a time limit carefully watched by the city clerk.

    That’s public comment on every single action item, not just a one-time, grudgingly given time bloc in the meeting.

    Would-be speakers in Richmond fill out a card and give it to the clerk at the beginning of the meeting, indicating on which agenda item (or items) they want to comment.

    In discussions immediately following public comments, council members frequently refer to what the public said.

    Rather than taking the high road on citizen input, Seneca Falls might be taking a cue from Schuyler County’s town of Reading, where that town board’s disdain for its citizens — particularly citizen comments at meetings — has been routinely demonstrated in the past few years.

    Reading officials proudly tout that while New York state law does not require them to allow a single word of public input at meetings, they allow the public commentary anyway. Sometimes.

    But in recent years Reading officials have often severely limited any comments — even forbidding that some topics be mentioned.

    The dueling laws in Seneca Falls that prompted the town supervisor to shut down public comment deal with the ever-growing Seneca Meadows landfill and the community controversy over whether the facility should be shut down by 2025 (Local Law 3 passed in 2016) or not (Local Law 2, under consideration).

    It’s a critical issue that certainly requires as much discussion as citizens desire — whether impatient town officials want to listen or not. The elected officials’ time, after all, is really the public’s time.

    Perhaps at the upcoming public hearing on Local Law 2 citizens could demand a shift in the conversation to also talk about the need for a new local law, one that would codify public comments into the legal framework of all town of Seneca Falls meetings.

    Such a law might even spawn copycat legislation in other towns.

    Perhaps the state legislature would give the matter consideration too.

    It’s a law that would be popular with the public, those same people who the town boards are actually representing.

(Fitzgerald worked for six newspapers as a writer and editor as well as a correspondent for several news services. He splits his time between Valois, NY and Pt. Richmond, Calif. You can email him at Michael.Fitzgeraldfltcolumnist@gmail.com and visit his website at michaeljfitzgerald.blogspot.com.)

An optimistic Oscar night this year

(Editor's note: The following column appeared in the March 3, 2017 edition of the Finger Lakes Times in Geneva, NY)

By Michael J. Fitzgerald, FLT columnist

Last Sunday evening’s Oscar presentations were funny, poignant, heart wrenching and even chaotic.

But the evening carried with it a shiny patina of hope, too.

The chaos came at the tail end of the evening in the announcement of best film.

An envelope mix-up prompted actors Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway to announce the wrong winner, a mind-blowing error quickly rectified.

That foul-up dominated entertainment news for days, with much deserved attention paid to the graciousness of the cast of “La-La Land.” That film’s ensemble was already on stage accepting their Oscar, only to be told the real Academy Award winner was the film “Moonlight.”

It was role modeling at its best. No warning. Just doing the right thing. And with grace.

That major mishap almost eclipsed the gentle and mostly understated messages by award presenters and recipients about hope, inclusiveness, and a world in which people work to solve differences.

Those messages — delivered in tones alternating between playfully comedic and carefully measured — were in stark contrast to the grim, angry and most often fear-filled rhetoric we have heard repeatedly in recent weeks from our new president and a way too-compliant Congress.

Oscar host Jimmy Kimmel live-tweeted to President Trump early in the show, later telling the audience he was worried. The White House hadn’t fired back a single fiery tweet of complaint.

Huge!

On the more serious side, Mexican actor Gael Garcia Bernal condemned the U.S. president’s Mexico-wall scheme.

“I am against any kind of wall that wants to separate us,” he said.

Later, songwriter Justin Paul gave a shout-out to his former teachers at Westport, Conn. high school when he accepted an Oscar.

“I was educated in public schools, where arts and culture are valued,” he said, widely interpreted as a comment about new federal education secretary Betsy DeVos, a charter-school advocate.

Perhaps the most forceful political statement was by Iranian astronaut Anousheh Ansari, read on behalf of Iranian director Asghar Farhadi. Farhadi won for Best Foreign Language Film.

“My absence is out of respect for the people of my country and those of other six nations whom have been disrespected by the inhumane law that bans entry of immigrants to the U.S. Dividing the world into the ‘us’ and ‘our enemies’ categories creates fear,” he said.

The statement drew a standing ovation.

The films by nominees and winners alike provided positive, uplifting social commentary.

The plot of “Arrival,” a science fiction tale about aliens landing on earth, focuses on the fear-filled human response to the aliens’ arrival from space.

From the first appearance of orb-shaped spaceships, it was painfully obvious the aliens’ superior technology discounted any chance of building a wall to keep the extraterrestrials out.

But while the Earth’s military locked and loaded — the standard-issue fearful human response to most unknowns — a plucky young female linguist managed to communicate with the aliens, who, it turned out, had no hostile intentions at all. They simply had come to help the human race.

Imagine that, immigrants who want to be of service.

The power that film and images hold to shape our opinions and emote strong feelings was central in all the Academy Awards presentations and the films they honored. So was a strong sense of teamwork, cooperation and compassion, three things conspicuously absent from the national political stage today.

Oscar Wilde once wrote: “Life imitates art far more than art imitates life.”

It might be that in the 21st Century, we need to pay more attention to the moral compass of our art and less to our shrill political shills to lead us to the “kinder, gentler nation” proposed by former U.S. President George H.W. Bush in 1988.

We can have that, but only if we demand it.

Fitzgerald worked for six newspapers as a writer and editor as well as a correspondent for several news services. He splits his time between Valois, NY and Pt. Richmond, Calif. You can email him at Michael.Fitzgeraldfltcolumnist@gmail.com and visit his website at michaeljfitzgerald.blogspot.com.