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TITLE: Mindful Work and Technology
SPEAKER: David M. Levy
EVENT DATE: 03/22/2006
RUNNING TIME: 46 minutes
DESCRIPTION:
David Levy, holder of the Harissios Papamarkou Chair in Technology and Education at the John W. Kluge Center of the Library of Congress, spoke about ways to bring contemplative practices into today's harried workplaces. According to Levy, new information technologies, including e-mail and the World Wide Web, have transformed the way people work, allowing them to collaborate over vast distances and to work at all hours of the day and night. But there is increasing evidence that the stress of working in these accelerated, information-saturated ways is taking a toll on workers, contributing to physical and psychological ailments and loss in attentiveness and time to think.
"There is growing scientific evidence that simple contemplative practices, including meditation and yoga, not only relieve stress but encourage states of greater attentiveness," said Levy. "It seems natural to explore how such practices might help us design workplaces and work technologies that support more healthful and productive forms of work."
Speaker Biography: David Levy, a professor at the Information School of the University of Washington, holds a Ph.D. from Stanford University in computer science and a diploma in calligraphy and bookbinding from the Roehampton Institute, London. He was a member of the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center, where his research focused on the nature of documents and on the tools and practices through which they are created and used. His current research focuses on information and the quality of life.