The writer is an analyst and commentator. Some of the most compelling scientific work on human behaviour being done today is in the area of how our brains react to information, both at the micro level, in terms of brain-chemistry and info-receptors, and at the macro level in terms of how large groups of human beings respond to strategic communications. For individuals, the growing consensus seems to be that the flow of information to our brain must be regulated. Our minds are not infinite vessels that can continue to usefully process every tweet, every news ticker, every cute kitten rolling around, or every sports update all at the same time. This is one of the basic messages Nicholas Carr advocates in a new book called ‘The Shallows: What the Internet is doing to our brains’. The book details the addictive nature of the dopamine release-inducing absorption of new information in digital age. The New York Times has a wonderful oped this Sunday by Tony Schwartz titled ‘Addicted to Distraction’ from which I learnt about Carr’s new book. Many people find the message of too much information being addictive to be deeply compelling. The reason is simple. In every analysis of this behavioural and social problem, we see a reflection of ourselves. The addiction to ‘new information’ is among the most widespread of our age. It has manifested itself in a variety of ways across the world, but the symptoms are unmistakeable. Screens dominate our private, semi-private and public spaces. We are constantly hunting for new bits and bytes of information. This isn’t just a problem of the digital age, but it is a problem that has been exacerbated by it. Of course, when we are dealing with societies in which digital penetration pushes 100 percent, using the pronoun ‘we’ makes sense. It is less sensible to make sweeping allusions to ‘our’ collective problems of digital invasiveness and an addiction to it, when smart phones still make up less than 20 percent of all subscribers, and where cable television coverage is still not universal. In simple terms, there are plenty of places in Pakistan where, even though human nature is the same, the access to information is not. There are fewer television channels, and slower internet speeds in places like Gilgit, Mastung, Dadu, Kohistan. Indeed, the further away you get from Karachi, Lahore or Islamabad, the less information you are likely to be bombarded with. If we take the problem of what the internet and news television are doing to our brains seriously then this could be a good thing. Except that the lack of digital access to the ‘periphery’ of Pakistan is actually a great proxy for the lack of all other forms of access to that same periphery. The ‘periphery’ has less schools, less basic health units, lower quality water and worse human development indicators. The lack of digital access to the periphery is not a fortuitous luxury, it is the insult to the injury. All of this is incredibly relevant to anyone interested in the coherence of the narrative of ‘Pakistaniness’ that many in the civilian and military establishment desperately want to establish as the country fights terror and tries to build its economy – let’s call these two things the pro-NAP and pro-CPEC narratives of Pakistan. Obviously, every Pakistani would want an end to terror and would want greater economic opportunities. I count myself as a strong supporter of efforts to bring Pakistanis closer together, and to make all Pakistanis better off. So, naturally, I have tried to think about the implications of the problem of an addiction to information, not only as something I need to sort out at a personal level (less tweets for people I don’t know, more hugs for the ones I do), but also as a challenge for public policy in Pakistan. As ever, what seems obvious and natural at the micro level becomes remarkably more complex at the macro level. At the macro level the problem has at least two layers, if not more. On the one hand, there is the Pakistani (most probably male, most probably urban, and therefore, most probably in Karachi, or along the GT Road urban corridor) who is getting too much information. Whilst this Pakistani probably needs to cut down his time watching talks shows, or furiously swiping/typing on a screen at a personal level, his exposure to information is an opportunity for the framers and implementers of public policy. Executed competently, a good national communication strategy will win over this male, urban, high-information-consumption Pakistani. On the other hand, there is the Pakistani (most probably living in a rural area, more likely than not to be economically disadvantaged, probably female, possibly belonging to one of the smaller ethnic or religious groups in the country) who is not getting enough information. As we know, lower information-consumption tends to overlap with lower consumption overall, especially nutrition, education, health and economic opportunity. This poses a particularly sharp and potentially toxic challenge for public policy. Even the best, most articulate, smoothest and well-financed communications strategy will not really convince this Pakistani about the path to security and prosperity that the country has ostensibly decided to embark upon. There are two reasons why this would be the case. The first one is obvious – if the range of information delivery mechanisms to less privileged Pakistanis – or Pakistanis on the ‘periphery’ – is smaller, then delivering messages effectively to those Pakistanis is harder. The second one should be even more obvious. Selling the secure and prosperous future of the country to those who have been consistently (and systematically) excluded from security and prosperity in the past, is a pretty tough job. Those who are on the periphery may feel that they got there because we (the people not on the periphery, and naturally inclined to buy this vision of security and prosperity) have put them there. Why would they buy the argument, even if it was being made and delivered flawlessly? This argument loops back rather nicely. Those of us lamenting too much information and our addiction to smartphones or talk shows, are operating in a time and space continuum that is totally divorced from those who cannot imagine a lamentation of having too much of anything, because they have too little of everything. Among other implications of all this for public policy, there is one that is perhaps more timely and apt than any other. At a time when the civilian and military establishment want to bring everyone in the country onto the same page, in part by insisting that everyone in the country is already on the same page, we have to ask what the cost of this insistence might be, and how to deal with this cost. Last week a newspaper columnist (named Mohammad Taqi) that I tend to disagree with frequently, on both substance and tone, was told that he could no longer write his column. For the last few days, members of a political party (the Awami National Party) that I tend to fundamentally differ with, have been agitating about the CEPC routes, and frequently being accused of being anti-national in the bargain. A few months earlier, a group of activists, left-leaning faculty members and students at a university (named LUMS) were told that they could not host a discussion about Balochistan. The common thread amongst these folks and the issues they talk about is the thread of ‘periphery’. These people are essentially lamenting that they or their causes have been left by the wayside. It isn’t altogether shocking that they sometimes sound bitter. And then the civilian and military establishment’s chosen method of dealing with these folks, who are bitter about being left out of mainstream, is to exclude them further from the mainstream? Wow. This is, as a public policy response, akin to claiming that we need to restrict access to smartphones, tablets and 3G connections for those people who do not have them, because we know what it’s like to be addicted to the internet and we want to spare them the bother. Wow. We should imagine the world from the perspective of the ‘periphery’ and think about how to fix the divide rather than make decisions that exacerbate the distances. Banning columnists, branding people traitors and stifling debate isn’t the way to do that.
