#mediaandtech

The path towards as an anti-racist world continues and there’s still a lot we can do when it comes to the Black Lives Movement. You can find info here. 

In continuing to make sure we include Black voices in our everyday lives, one small area we can start in is in our social media feeds. Below are some Black-run accounts I enjoy following.

@blackgirlssurf 

This photo was actually reposted by Black Girls Surf from the World Surf League, but it speaks volumes.  Black Girls Surf is all about empowering and elevating young Black girl surfers.  

@renellaice 

Renell Medrano is one of my most favorite photographers right now. A lot of her work emphasizes her heritage as Dominican-American — check out her Pampara video for a taste of her style.

@tuna__turner

With a hand spelled with two underscores, @tuna__turner belongs to chef, artist, and first-generation Jamaican American DeVonn Francis. He’s behind Yardy (@yardy.nyc) in New York City, a culinary event company that is now doing meal deliveries during COVID-19. His feed is full of earthy meal platings and fashion-forward self portraits.

@nique_miller

Based in Hawaii, Nique Miller is a professional surfer ranked among the top 10 SUP boarders by the Association of Paddlesurf Professionals.  Her feed consists of deep blue waters, colorful swim suits, and the occasional haku lei.

@mark.c

This powerful photo has been circulating quite a bit in the last few weeks and its just one among the many other photos taken by Mark Clennon of the Black Lives Matter protests.  TIME recently did a piece on this photo which you can read here.

@brothervellies 

Brother Vellies is a black-owned bag and shoe house founded by Aurora James that uses traditional African design practices and techniques while emphasizing sustainability. I’m currently obsessed with their boots and cow print clogs.

@tylersphotos 

Another great photographer, Mitchell is a 25 year old photographer and filmmaker based in Brooklyn who explores what he calls a “new aesthetic of blackness.” He’s the photog behind many fashion mag covers including i-D, Dazed, Vogue (see his Beyoncé cover shoot for Vogue).

@bantuwax 

Bantu Wax is a surf and swimwear brand by designer Yodit Eklund.  Eklund doesn’t really post products on the feed, but what you will get are images that will make you want to take a trip down to Dakar or Cape Town post COVID-19.

@alexwolf 

This was originally published on The Startup on Medium.

If your day is anything like mine, it may involve asking Google or Alexa the latest news, weather, traffic, and whatever reminders you set up, right after getting out of bed.

You then ask your smart speaker to play some playlist on Spotify to get you pumped up for the rest of the day. You proceed to your car, and once in, your get-pumped-playlist syncs to your car speakers as you make your way through morning traffic. Once at work (or wherever), you spend a good amount of it with headphones — your work playlist, lo-fi beats, music for concentration, or whatever playlist you swear helps you get the work done.

On the way home? It’s podcast time. Once at home, it’s a combination of more music and some Netflix. Then its relaxing music as you get ready for bed, and maybe a bedtime story or white noise and a shut down timer once you hit the sheets.

You look to sound as something to keep you going — something that reminds you that you have things to do and places to be at. Silence, on the other hand, is for Saturday mornings and days by the beach.

Also, you LOVE music.

Having grown up in the age of mobile technology, I’ve of course heard about the problems that come with screen time and social media (I’m glad the slowing revolution is already growing in light of it all). But what’s the deal with specifically, noise?

… is keeping our ears occupied also problematic?

Sure, we can cut down in our screen time and turn on our Flipd app to lock out of our distracting third party apps. But is keeping our ears occupied also problematic? Or rather, do lose anything important when we choose noise?

UPDATE:  Also check out Flora which I love and wrote about here.

In a TED article titled “Why we owe it to ourselves to spend quiet time alone everyday,” physicist and writer Alan Lightman said, “By not giving ourselves the minutes — or hours—free of devices and distractions, we risk losing our ability to know who we are and what’s important to us.”

Lightman likened the issue to global warming in that this new way of fast living and almost constant external stimulation was becoming more the norm, and slow-paced living and quietness more and more a thing of the past.

“… we risk losing our ability to know who we are and what’s important to us.” — Alan Lightman

Through a power choice of words, he writes, “We are creating a global machine in which each of us is a mindless and reflexive cog, relentlessly driven by the speed, noise, and artificial urgency of the wired world.”

Lightman then goes to make a proposal: “That half our waking minds be designated and saved for quiet reflection.”

Designating quiet time for the sake of self reflection and growth is definitely something we can all benefit from, and it makes sense.

Health wise? It’s not new news that noise pollution — all the unwanted noise coming from cities, etc.—has a significant impact on not only human health. In fact, the World Health Organization in 2011 came out with a report describing noise pollution as a “modern plague” and pointed to “overwhelming evidence that exposure to environmental noise has adverse effects on the health of the population.”

But there’s a good chance that noises that fall outside of unwanted noise pollution are worth cutting back on. For example, a 2013 study presented at an annual American Society of Hypertension meeting got specific and showed that phone calls led to rises in systolic blood pressure.

A quick Google search will bring many more links on how beneficial silence can be, but I really liked this article called “This Is Your Brain on Silence” by Daniel A. Gross on Nautilus.

As mentioned, research on noise and health isn’t new and Gross points that out by quoting the founder of modern nursing Florence Nightingale who once wrote, “Unnecessary noise is the most cruel absence of care that can be inflicted on sick or well.”

While she did also quote a lecture that claimed “sudden noises” could cause death among sick children, her idea of noise being bad for those with illnesses wasn’t too far off from what recent researchers have found.

When making quiet hours for patients, many hospitals have pointed to research showing that quiet environments enhance healing.

Gross cited a few studies on sound. One study done in 2006 by a physician named Luciano Bernardi found that two-minutes of silence between musical tracks proved to be more relaxing than “relaxing” music, but also more relaxing than longer amounts of silence before the music began playing.

The fun part was that Bernardi didn’t have the intention to study the effects of silence, but at the end concluded that there was something important about the sudden silence after the music when it came to relaxation. He said, “Perhaps the arousal is something that concentrates the mind in one direction, so that when there is nothing more arousing, then you have deeper relaxation.”

Rather, two hours of silence per day encouraged cell development in the hippocampus.

Another study Gross looked to was done in 2013 by Duke University regenerative biologist, Imke Kirste. Like Bernardi, Kirste wasn’t interested in the effects of silence — only of how different sounds would affect the brains of adult mice.

What Kirste found was that none of the sounds had a lasting impact on the mice’s brains. Rather, two hours of silence per day encouraged cell development in the mice’s hippocampus.

As Gross put it, “the total absence of input was having a more pronounced effect than any sort of input tested.”

Acknowledging that new brain cells didn’t necessarily mean health benefits, Kirste found that the particular cells being developed seemed to become functioning neurons.

“Freedom from noise and goal-directed tasks, it appears, unites the quiet without and within, allowing our conscious workspace to do its thing, to weave ourselves into the world, to discover where we fit in,” — Daniel A. Gross

Gross then goes into other studies and research that touch on how our brains remain active even amidst silence, and goes into what can be understood as a “default mode” where we (surprise!) get to engage in self-reflection.

He wrote, “Freedom from noise and goal-directed tasks, it appears, unites the quiet without and within, allowing our conscious workspace to do its thing, to weave ourselves into the world, to discover where we fit in.”

So in an age where we’re constantly plugged in and are now trying to rethink how we consume technology, it’s good to remind ourselves that it isn’t just putting our phones away that can be good for us. Getting some intentional quiet time, even for just two hours, can do good too.

”Me, can you focus on me?” — H.E.R’s Focus as sung to me by my homework.

I’ve recently come to realize that I may have a slight app addition.  But it’s something I’m working on.  And ironic as it may seem, I’ve been relying on apps to keep me focused.

I recently discovered Flora after finding out the focus app I usually used began requiring in-app purchases.  What drew me to other app was its app-locking feature that essentially hid all social apps from view so that I wouldn’t be able to check them.

However, with Flora, I’ve not only been staying focused on my own, I’ve actually found myself wanting to stay focused.  Why?  TREES.  Specifically Oak trees and maple trees and Brazilwoods, and even roses, blueberry bushes, açaí palms, and Cattleya Orchids.

Encouragement Through Gamification 

My favorite thing about Flora is that it uses gamification to encourage users to stay focused and refrain from checking all the other apps on their phone.  When opening the app, you’re taken into your “room” where you choose how long you want to focus.  Once you press start, a virtual seed is planted and grows during the set focus time.  Leave the app and the tree dies.  I did it once and got a little message saying I killed a tree.  Never again.

Each time you enter into a focus session and successfully finish, a new tree is added to your virtual garden.  

What makes focus sessions even more fun (focus? fun?) is that you can go on a “Grand Tour” of plants — focusing your way across different areas of the world and collecting native plants.  I currently just finished Stop 6 in the United Kingdom where I got some apples, royals oaks, and tudor roses for my garden.  Next stop for me?  Germany!

If you want to step it up a notch, Flora also lets you name a price you are willing to pay if you fail to go through the whole session.  If you fail, your plant dies, but the money you put down gets a real tree planted.  If you successfully finish a session, no charge is made and you get a special prize.

Focus Together

Flora also lets you focus with others on the app which I think is another great way to encourage focus.  

Other apps I’ve used have had similar social features like allowing people to create groups that friends or classmates can join and even compete in to see who can get to the top of the leader board.  Flora on the other hand allows people to enter focus sessions together and essentially grow a plant together.  If anyone exits the focus session, you guessed it — the tree dies.

I could see this being great in study groups and even meetings.  It’s like an added sense of accomplishment (hello, dopamine!) that people can experience together. 

Another social feature Flora has is its friend feed that basically allows you to see your friends’ recent focus sessions.  While its not like social media feeds where you can comment and like your friends’ activities, for me personally, it’s just another way to encourage me to focus.  Seeing others being productive simple makes me want to be productive.  

Plant Real Trees

What makes Flora even better is that users at any time can use its Flora Real service to plant a real tree in rural communities around the world through partnership with tree planting organizations like Trees for the Future.  

Each time you reach a focus milestone of 120, 60, or 24 hours, a tree is planted, depending on what plan you choose. As of this writing, 35,394 trees have been planted.  

I absolutely love this app and think its great that it can get me to look forward to getting into focus mode.  And so far, it’s been working for me as I work from home and get ready for at-home finals due to the Covid-19 pandemic.  It might not work for everyone, but it’s worth a try if focus is something you struggle with.  

Intellectual property, in a broad sense, is fascinating because it encourages and celebrates creativity and innovation while also involving some limits that can sometimes stifle those things.

Linked below are five podcast episodes that explore the topic and give ideas on how it is in many ways, a backbone to everyday life.

What is Original? — TED Radio Hour

Open Source World — TED Radio Hour

Did Instagram Copy Snapchat? — Recode Decode

Dear Music Fans... – StartUp Podcast