Gibson's "Virtual Light"
It’s hard not to be a fan of Gibson, if you’re working among the technorati. Our “sociologist of the near future” has predicted and coined a number of cultural/technological phenomena, and in “Idoru”, it seems to be the rise of big data. I’m reading it now, having just finished his “Virtual Light” a few weeks ago. The following passage strikes me not just because of its prescience, but its relevance to my own neurochemical disposition – a disposition that others in the field must certainly share.
“Coffee,” Laney said.
Laney was not, he was careful to point out, a voyeur. He had a peculiar knack with data-collection architectures, and a medically documented concentration-deficit that he could toggle, under certain conditions, into a state of pathological hyperfocus. This made him, he continued over lattes in a Roppongi branch of Amos ‘n’ Andes, an extremely good researcher. (He made no mention of the Federal Orphanage in Gainesville, nor of any attempts that might have been made to cure his concentration-deficit. The 5-SB trials or any of that.)
The relevant data, in terms of his current employability, was that he was an intuitive fisher of patterns of information: of the sort of signature a particular individual inadvertently created in the net as he or she went about the mundane yet endlessly multiplex business of life in a digital society. Laney’s concentration-deficit, too slight to register on some scales, made him a natural channel-zapper, shifting from program to program, from database to database, from platform to platform, in a way to was, well, intuitive.
And that was the catch, really, when it came to finding employment: Laney was the equivalent of a dowser, a cybernetic water-witch. He couldn’t explain how he did what he did. He just didn’t know.
I think that the correlation between developers and caffeine (and beer, and other substances) speaks to a real need for a “pathological hyperfocus” when doing computer research. Dive into any CS textbook or programming forum worth its salt, and you’ll see it right away: free software is “free as in beer”, according to Richard Stallman. The Java language is named for coffee, “said to be consumed in large quantities by the language’s creators.” Commentors on StackOverflow or Slashdot often jokingly offer each other beer in return for digital services. Substances are not just popular among developers, they are part of us, and part of the mythology of technology that we surround ourselves with.
At work, I drink several cups of coffee before any long project. Like liquid Adderal, coffee gets me in that pathological hyperfocus that Gibson writes about. I think it’s safe to say that coffee doesn’t just help me work, but I need it to work effectively.
At the same time, people like Laney, myself, and others with ADHD seem to be predisposed to hyperfocusing naturally. Additionally, people with attention deficit disorders are at a higher risk for substance addiction. This begs the question – does the association between beer and caffeine indicate higher rates of attention deficit disorders (because of chemical addictions) among developers?
I agree with you about character types who have a gift for research, programming and data – there definitely seems to be a special ability to hyperfocus and toggle. I don’t know if it’s exclusive to technical careers or that a lot of people with this gift end up in technical careers because it feels right. I once saw Erik Larson, the author of Devil in the White City, at a presentation describe a similar gift that he had when doing research for his non-fiction prose. Dr. Daniel Amen, researcher on ADHD, also says that in his brain imaging research, he finds that some people who are diagnosed with ADHD have the same brain signature as Heroin addicts, and that is why certain stimulant medication works for them – their brains actually need stimulants to align themselves and function correctly. Super interesting stuff, and great post!
The ADHD brain does certainly seem to need extra stimulants to function correctly. Based on the limited reading I’ve done in the subject, it seems that the neocortex doesn’t produce enough stimulants to reach a ‘normal’ level of brain function. It relies on new activities (which provide momentary bursts of simulants, eventually waning into boredom) and chemicals (simulating stimulant production, thereby letting the brain ‘plateau’ to normal function) to concentrate. I’m interested in whether you think chemical dependecy or the concentration-deficient brain came first, however. It’s a sort of chicken-and-the-egg scenario, as I see it.
Thanks for the tip about Devil In The White City and Dr Amen. I’ll be sure to check both of them out!
Nice color choice on the blog. It is really easy on my eyes and I have bad eyes too so that’s a really big compliment lol