Help! My Brain is Under Attack!

The other morning I realized I had a problem.

I like to spend some quiet time with God in the mornings. Even though I live in a city, I have one of the best places in the world to do this (I wrote about my back deck in my book, Our Father’s World – check it out). I can look out over a restored prairie green space, I have two bird feeders set up that normally attract fifteen to twenty sparrows and finches in the early hours (and a couple of squirrels). Southern Wisconsin in the summer time has weather to die for – this week has been low humidity and in the seventies early in the morning. And I have a cup of coffee that is good enough to be served in heaven. Settle down, open my bible – and…

Oh, but first I need to check my email. And NPR is on the radio. And look! I’ve had seven responses on Facebook to the Twitter update I sent last night. And let’s not forget the newspaper (old-fashioned as it is) to find out how the Brewers and Red Sox did last night…

What happened to “spend a little time with God?”

I figured it out – I’ve been suffering from a DDoS attack on my brain and on my soul.

DDoS (“Distributed Denial of Service”) attacks are a favorite way for hackers and even some governments to disable targeted websites by flooding them with millions of bogus requests for information from ‘bots’ or ‘zombie’ computers around the world. In fact, just a couple of weeks ago, both Twitter and Facebook were apparently the latest victims of these attacks. The largest servers on the Internet can be disabled in moments by such an attack. On August 6 Twitter was shut down entirely.

Twitter Outage Causes Panic, Twit-drawal Symptoms

It’s what happened to millions of Twitter users that made me realize what is really going on here.

TwitTip, a blog devoted to Twitter (what else?) ran a post, ‘What Did You Do the Day Twitter Almost Died?’ that collected numerous comments from affected users.

Here’s one from a person named Kim:

Actually went over to Facebook for a few minutes until I realized it was having issues as well. Checked Google to determine what the problem was (as reported by various tech sites and other media). Went back on Facebook to explain to my friends (who were completely frustrated by then) that it really and truly was *NOT* the end of the world. Then proceeded to work through my own withdrawal symptoms by forcing myself to shut down my laptop and go shopping … yeah, it was a rough day …

And another from Leo:

I panicked … so I got all geeky taking screenshots of my connection and how i couldn’t even reach http://www.tweeter.com and harrassed people on FB about it… then I decided to go to da movies to chillax, dropped and broke my phone, realised my mp3player wasn’t working and then I got all religious and prayed… what about you?

My brief and unscientific sampling suggests that panic and withdrawal symptoms were widespread as the outage continued.

Others ‘get their lives back’

But another theme appears repeatedly in the comments. Some people got their lives back, if only briefly:

It’s amazing the work you “forgot” you had to do until Twitter is down! I took the day to catch up on emails, faxes, and worked on my blog. Made it a productive day. [Corree]

I did what I would’ve done had Twitter been up, except I didn’t have to deal with Twitter as a distraction. It was quite refreshing and relaxing. [Corvida]

I actually went out and did some photography. Tested a new meter and tried my hand at some different kind of natural light portraits. I actually learned some new things. [Glenn]

I went into withdrawal then decided to get some work done and actually spend time with visiting relatives which had been all but neglected while I tweeted up a storm. Hope this doesn’t happen again. Need my daily doses on a regular schedule. [Stella]

In other words, in the absence of the powerful, addictive attraction of Twitter and Facebook, these people returned to a life they used to live all the time, if briefly and more or less kicking and screaming – and admittedly, often to a life still dominated by internet activities.

The Real Threat

These users, freed momentarily from the powerful attraction of Twitter, were discovering the same thing I was pondering that morning: Their brains had been under a DDoS type attack. Twitter, Facebook and always-available-email via smart phones act on users like the bogus information requests in an actual DDoS attack. They look like genuine, and they masquerade as ‘productive’ requests for our attention, but they result in massive overload and cause us to neglect our relationships, our responsibilities – and all the other mundane stuff we used to consider ‘life’.

The New York Times recently noted how much morning activities have been affected by the internet addiction:

This is morning in America in the Internet age. After six to eight hours of network deprivation — also known as sleep — people are increasingly waking up and lunging for cellphones and laptops, sometimes even before swinging their legs to the floor and tending to more biologically urgent activities.

“It used to be you woke up, went to the bathroom, maybe brushed your teeth and picked up the newspaper,” said Naomi S. Baron, a professor of linguistics at American University, who has written about technology’s push into everyday life. “But what we do first now has changed dramatically. I’ll be the first to admit: the first thing I do is check my e-mail.”

…The surge of early risers is reflected in online and wireless traffic patterns. Internet companies that used to watch traffic levels rise only when people booted up at work now see the uptick much earlier.

Arbor Networks, a Boston company that analyzes Internet use, says that Web traffic in the United States gradually declines from midnight to around 6 a.m. on the East Coast and then gets a huge morning caffeine jolt. “It’s a rocket ship that takes off at 7 a.m,” said Craig Labovitz, Arbor’s chief scientist.

Victims of an Invisible Assault

There are a host of ways that companies can defend themselves against internet DDoS attacks. The methods are technical and would mean little to you or me, but the point is this: In the world of the internet, these attacks are recognized for what they are – attempts to overwhelm legitimate network activity and to bring normal functions to a halt.

The DDoS attacks against our brains succeed primarily because we don’t recognize them for what they are. Tweets are fun. Facebook allows us to connect with family and friends. Email is business.

We’re just being being productive, we’re multitasking, we’re being productive, we’re being… overwhelmed. Not to put to fine a point on it, I think we’re lying to ourselves. Our genuine productivity as human beings under these conditions is almost nil. And we don’t even see it happening.

That doesn’t mean it isn’t happening. It is – and that very fact that you are reading this post right now is (I suspect) conclusive evidence. Think about it – how did you get here? I know you didn’t start this browsing session intending to read this post. You clicked on Facebook, you wandered to your Google Reader account , you saw a Tweet – and here you are, another victim of a psycho-DDoS attack.

[Admit it – what are you really supposed to be doing right now?]

But before you go back to work…

Before you leave, think for just a minute about how to defend against this.

I think the best way is to learn how to pull the plug. Give yourself a break. Confine email to specific times on specific devices. Give yourself a maximum number of tweets per day (like calories) and then reduce that number.

Or go for broke like I am. Even as you read this, I’m on my way to northern Michigan. With my wife’s help, I will have turned off the internet, email and the cell phone.

Eight days of peace. Eight days to learn to be genuinely productive again. To turn off electronic noise so I can turn on the blessed sounds of God’s creation. To write words without being distracted every 45 seconds by an email chime or another news headline.

And after that? Who knows? I have just learned that my hero, Wendell Berry, will not respond to a letter unless it’s written by hand. hmmmm…

Anyway – why don’t you give it a try, too? Let me know how it goes. Just Twe…. never mind – I won’t see it anyway!

Ed Brown is Director of Care of Creation, an organization dedicated to 'mobilizing the church to respond to the environmental crisis.' Read more at careofcreation.net and Ed's blog at ourfathersworld.org