The Digital Human Folgen

Aleks Krotoski explores the technology of time keeping. As clocks get more accurate and time becomes more abstract what does that mean for how we experience it?The accurate keeping of time allows our technological world to keep spinning and since earliest times has been central to how civilisation has developed. From the earliest mechanical clocks, the supercomputers of their day to the first wearable technology or pocket watch they've been at the forefront of technological advancement.But what has 'clock time' done to how we experience the passage of time? Aleks will find out as she visits the earliest time recording device ever discovered, in a muddy Aberdeen-shire field some 5000 years older than Stone Henge. In contrast she sees how modern time is produced by the atomic clocks of the BIPM in Paris, its here that time for the world is produced, sychronising everything from power grids to GPS satellites and the internet. She also explores how we experience time subjectively and what that means for how we perceive the world. Finally she hears from someone who tried to live without clocks and what that meant for his experience of time.Contributors: Prof. Vince Gaffney, Artist Cathy Haynes, Neuroscientist David Eagleman, Professional base jumper Karina Holkeim and writer and software developer Steve Corona.Producer: Peter McManus.

Do you feel in control of your technology, or is it the other way round?In this last episode of the current series of The Digital Human Aleks Krotoski asks if we could all do with a detox from our digital devices. It's a question she's increasingly been asking herself, which brings her to the couch of cyber addiction therapist Chris Mulligan. While there is no classification of cyber addiction in any psychiatric manual in the world there are clearly people who have problems switching off from games or what they're looking at online.Does the answer lie in how technology has hijacked the reward systems of our brains? Kelly Mcgonigal is a neuroscientist at Stanford University and has made a special study of willpower and the challenges we face in modern living. She's been researching how social information is profoundly addictive to the modern human brain. Aleks also hears about different approaches to solving the problem and keeping our technology use under control. Author Evgeny Morozov locks his phone and router cable in a time locked safe, while Susan Maushart took herself and her family offline for 6 months to kick-start a more mindful and deliberate approach to technology use.But are these methods no more than sticking plasters and is it to ourselves and how we relate to our technology that we should look to rebalance this relationship. Producer Peter McManus.

Aleks Krotoski explores our lives in the digital world. This week she asks, are our connected modern lives making us lonelier than ever?