Episode: 1084
Title: HPR1084: Paul Levy on Learning to Dance with Spiders
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr1084/hpr1084.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-17 18:40:28

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The Phone Circle Podcast on Hacker Public Radio in this episode, Paul Levy, on Learning
to Dance with Spiders.
Hello World and welcome to the Fold Circle Podcast on Hacker Public Radio.
This episode consists of an interview with entrepreneur, thinker and author, Paul Levy.
The founder of Cats 3000 and Rational Madness and author of the Play Texts, Paul is also
convener of the Critical Incident Unconference, which together leads to Learning to Dance
with Spiders, a workshop in which Paul shares some experiments from his book about living
consciously with your mobile phone and staying in tact in the world of social media.
It's truly groundbreaking, uncomfortable, but surprisingly useful.
The Fold Circle Podcast is the companion to Fold Circle magazine, the independent magazine
for the Ubuntu community.
Find us at Fold Circle magazine.org forward slash podcast.
So my first guest, I don't really know how to introduce.
His name is Paul Levy, we've known each other for quite a few years from various things
that we've got up to in Brighton, down on South Coast.
I was just looking to see how best to introduce you, Paul, because you've got so many strings
to your bow.
You're like a one-man orchestra.
Founder of Cats 3000, heading up the Rational Madness Theatre Group, producing the fringe
review, this reviews, convening the Critical Incident Unconference, which we were at
during the summer.
You're also a fellow at Centrim for the University of Brighton, a bit of a relay-sonce
man.
Sounds like I need to retire, actually.
Good evening.
How you doing?
Good thanks, yeah.
I think they probably all tied together somehow, but I'm not quite sure how.
Some of the themes that we were touching on at the Critical Incident earlier in the year,
which I talked about on the podcast and put a couple of blog posts in about earlier
in the summer.
That was all about personal change, wasn't it?
And a lot of your work that you do with companies and small businesses and organisations
is all about change in development and learning.
How do you care to tie the theatre connection into that?
I think where that came about was I was actually looking for a way of sharing, I suppose, some
of my own ideas about the world and started to realise that one of the most direct ways
of doing that these days was through the medium of art and my background has always been
in theatre.
So I got very, very interested in how you could just put on a theatre play and get it to
say something because it seems to address not just the head, but drama seems to address
the heart, too.
And as long as you're not too preachy about it, I think you can get ideas across and encourage
reflection through dramas.
So that's been one of the ways.
And I know I write books and that kind of stuff too, even that doesn't seem to quite
do it sometimes like a good scene from a play.
I'm a theme of ideas and heads and hearts.
One of the sessions that you facilitated at the critical instant was that strange thing
that you called learning to dance with spiders.
We all walked in not knowing quite what we were going to get and you kind of bought lots
of people up short and suddenly had them examining their own sort of behaviours and habits.
Do you just want to tell us what the basic idea behind learning to dance with spiders,
what it was and where it came from?
Well, we were putting together a piece of theatre called Text, which was exploring the whole
world of relationships on mobile phones.
And part of the background to that we were playing around with film was I actually came
across a bit of film where you always find it these days on YouTube, of a jumping spider.
And it's little kind of front, I don't know what you call them, pause our pincers.
We're tapping away just like something we've been doing on blackberries when we were rehearsing,
which were people's thumbs on mobile phones, at some point we were playing with iPhones.
I put one bit of the film over the film of the rehearsal and suddenly the thumbs and
the spider was very similar and that connected with an intuition I've had for a while that
this wonderful set of inventions that are around mobile phones, social media laptops, that
when you actually watch people and some tapping away and it's interesting when people can
get into conversations using fingertips is even as it can be fast and amazing and witty and
clever and quick.
There's something kind of, I don't know, cold and intellectual and spidery about it too.
And that was something that I was looking at.
It's the dual nature of this technology that even as we embraced it and have the equivalent
now of almost psychic connection across the world, there are people and this was what
text explored, finding more intimacy through their fingertips, through a keyboard and
being more open and sending more XXX kisses than they are actually in their physical
tactile relationships and there's some kind of feeling here that it was something actually
you can find in some forms of art too around technology that the most advanced technologies
you know and there's comics about aliens are from spider like intellectual cold beings
and my view is that that's not what I would like humanity to evolve into.
And I think one of the things that we found in that workshop session that you led was
to do with behaviours and how we are possibly sleepwalking unknowingly or unthinkingly into
a new set of behaviours as that technology evolves.
I think there's a couple of really interesting books around at the moment.
Geron Lanier's book's been around for a while about you and not a gadget and Sherry
Terkel who is writing about the loss of intimacy.
These are not people that are rubbish in the technology but what they are doing is saying
I think it's time to get conscious.
Sherry Terkel thinks these technologies have come on so fast.
It wouldn't do humanity any harm to just pause for a moment as a child that goes to meet
their parents at school at the gates, finds that the parent is more interested in their
Twitter status or and is giving them a half-halo and all that child is reaching out for
or it's just a moment of intimacy, a moment of acknowledgement before they run off and
play with their friends again.
And that loss of intimacy, Sherry's book is called Alone Together and we interviewed
her recently and she's talking about even as we're getting closer together, these technologies
give us almost psychic connection.
There's some kind of isolation that's going with it too and you know, the Reson Facebook
recently, how many of your 1000 friends would really be there for you when you needed
them?
And some people say you shouldn't have that expectation and let's stop rubbishing it
and saying that the word friend is meant to be something else now online but I'm just
interested in this dual nature of even as the technologies are promising us more intimacy.
There's something disconnecting as well and there's something about watching people and
young people can do this, they're thumb texting in their pockets and there's something about
fingertip connection I think that sometimes bypasses the hearts and I think it's the heart
where our vulnerability actually gives us some kind of reality that might be starting
to elude us with some of this technology.
I mean, I think the key thing here is to make it clear that those writers I mentioned
and myself, there are no general rules here saying this stuff is bad for you.
If you're completely okay with these technologies, maybe even love them then embrace them then
this stuff isn't for you but if you've started to feel maybe you are a little bit too dependent
on these technologies then this kind of approach might be for you.
Just to go back to that workshop session that we were sat in, you threw us a few little
exercises at the beginning of the session just to try and ascertain our state of dependence.
Can you just go through a couple of those things just for the benefit of the listeners and
they maybe do their own little test and see how dependent they are on their devices?
One of the tests of the exercise is your ability to do without it.
That's always been a test of it.
Just to have the option of being able to is quite important.
Actually one of the simplest ones to try would be can you actually not take your phone
with you to bed and the big excuse everyone gives you is well it's my alarm clock but
I think it's a lame excuse.
You can get alarm clocks.
Do you actually need your computer on your lap in bed?
So there's some exercises that are just simple around trying to exist without a computer.
The classic one with a computer is actually during that very annoying moment that Windows
PCs or probably a couple of minutes are warming up.
It's just to set yourself a little list of what it is you actually intend to do on your
computer.
And then don't beat yourself up if you don't do it but the chances are when you get to
the end of the process you would have what is sometimes called willed, which stands
or what was I looking for.
As instead of reading the email and responding to it you click on the link that is interesting
that takes you to a website where you end up buying something you had no intention
of buying or checking out time share accommodation in Spain and then at the end of your hour you
actually only completed one of the tasks that you were supposed to be doing.
And so I think there are also exercises there were at the end you then just look back
at your list and see how much you actually did achieve that you intended to do.
These technologies can distract us.
The tangents they can take us on can be really exciting but they can also just little by
little, sap away at the original will force that we had to be masters of these things.
So if you feel you're losing mastery over them I think there are little things you can
do to I suppose detoxify yourself a bit.
Yeah and that surprised a few of the attendees in that session.
What were a couple of those detox techniques that you were putting forward?
Detoxifying ones that are very physical is that if you've been doing a lot of fingertip
typing on your mobile phone or on your computer is to try and stuck stick your palm of your
hand into some clay and recognize that your hand actually has got almost like a human
body on it reflexology to talk about that.
Fingertips are very, very subtle and it's quite scary that apparently now a people are
losing sensual awareness on the end of their fingertips because a bit like craftsmen
it's becoming too hardened from too much typing.
Have a go at engaging with the whole palm of your hand and press into it and you'll
realize actually that fingertip communication gets you too much in your head where it's
in a pressing your feet firmly on the ground and your hands firmly into clay.
It seems to be more of a whole body thing and for some of you you might find it feels
like you're recovering a bit of the self that you lose when your attention is just too
much in a tiny bit of your body which is fingertips.
With mobile phones you can almost perch in any position and be tapping away so that's
the problem is yeah I mean you only have to look on I was on a train today.
People are probably unaware that 90% of their train journey is on that device and actually
every time they put it away within a second within five seconds ten seconds the damn thing
is out again and then may a culprit on this one as well.
I think what was interesting when we had that session was your diagnostic phase at the
start as we warmed up the attendees well I think you started off you had us just just
sitting there with the device in our hand while you were talking and then you said okay
put it down put it down on your knee and take your hand off it how long can you last
before you feel the overwhelming urge to reach out and either just just touch it or stroke
it or pick it up and there was something there about the suggestion that is I guess if
you want to reclaim yourself and reclaim your mobile phone it goes back to the days of
craftsmen sitting over their tools and they very very much there are lots of pictures
of them sitting forward and leaning over it and what tends to happen is that if you are
just sitting usually in a slouch position and your mobile phone buzzes and you just pull
it towards you you're already behaving as if it's just already attached to your hand
like a prosthesis and actually if you want to gain control of it what you actually need
to do is put a little bit of will effort sit up sit forward pick the thing up you bring
it towards you look at it kind of acknowledge it as a thing before you use it that might
sound a bit kind of mad or even you know just clumsy but what it does is it reestablish
this separation between you as tall user and the tool itself when you don't do that and
you start to behave as if it's just part of your hand again that little bit of consciousness
goes and if you're at ease with that it's fine but if you're starting to feel this
thing's dominating my life then what you probably have to do is put back in place a bit
of controlled separation between you and it so it becomes an it again didn't we have
a few people in that session where you put the question who you know when you wake up
in the morning what's the first thing you do and how many people confess that it was
pick up the mobile phone and see if they had any messages or check their Twitter or
their Facebook before they've even got out of bed some of them yeah that's exactly what
they're doing and the clever thing about the mobile phone alarm clock is that it does
these nicely probably these days with you know Buddhist temple chat and chimes or something
like that you know there's some great apps for that but as you pick it up to switch it off
rather cleverly your text messages are already there waiting to be read you know there's
a lot of alerts on a screen inviting you before you turn to your loved one and say good
morning is to do the more important stuff like you know find out who's responded to you
on Twitter it all feels a bit upside down to me do I sound like a grumpy old man here no
well it's different difficult for me to tell because I am the master of old
Commudjans on this show so yeah you're asking the wrong person I guess I'm saying that
because it does sound like you know some older generation saying this stuff scrap and it
really isn't that I think this stuff is so great I think this is what Sherry Terkel points
it's so great and it's come in such an avalanche that actually there's a danger in kind of future
shock we're not embracing it in a very conscious way and it might be good to put some separation
just so we can look at it and actually we might be able to get more and better things out of it
if we take a breather and it's interesting what you say about the the avalanche and the future
shock because one of the questions you then put to that group was about who's who's actually
comfortable with this I call it obsessive compulsive behavior yeah and and you you asked the
question around the around the room who's who's actually comfortable with this obsessive behavior
and the number of people who who some of whom were mature parents you know our age and older
who said no they they they hated the fact that they were so dependent on this gadget in their
hand and yet they couldn't put it down and that's the paradox of it and that's that's where it's
one of those things where we could polarize it and say it's you either use it or you don't or we
try the much harder path it's a much more difficult path that requires a bit of effort which is to say
how do I reestablish conscious control out of it without actually throwing it out of the window
I kind of sat there in that group thinking that maybe I was a little bit strange because I
maybe I I went through my obsessive compulsive phase when I was in my 20s with computers and
and constantly had something something on the go the phone is entirely different I don't have this
I don't well I have this love hate relationship with it because I constantly seem to trip over the
bits of software that have been really badly designed I somehow I have got that degree of separation
so I don't carry a watch but I've always got the phone on me well nearly always got the phone
on me I'll come back to that and I use my my phone as my alarm clock because it's the only the only
alarm clock I've got in the house which actually wakes me up I think it's a psychological thing when
the phone goes off I really know I have to get up but when I go to bed I put mine on flight mode
I don't get any tweets emails or anything else coming through it's purely there is the alarm
but the more we sat in that workshop session the more I'm starting to think I was slightly
strange and abnormal because I can actually switch the thing off for example yesterday I left
the phone in the car twice didn't miss it until I realized that my young lady hadn't been able
to text me to say where are you and two days before that I left the phone in the car three times
the day before that I actually left it in the house when I went out and had to turn around and come
back for it so it is obviously possible to not get quite so attached to these things but it's
it's that an acquired skill do you think well there's an expression I heard from a friend Paul
Miller called benevolent entanglement and I think that's maybe what you've managed to successfully
avoid benevolent entanglement it's worse has always been where your plumber or your builder you
know gets you involved in a relationship with them where they keep coming back and charging you
more and you keep thanking them for the help they're giving you and it can happen when you you know
if you get someone else to design your website but you've got to keep phoning them up every time
you want to add a bit of content to it you know that's a bit of an old thing now but you know that
that's benevolent entanglement Facebook has got very sticky properties where you know you're drawn
back to it all the time and the concept of you are not a gadget is that the Facebook isn't the gadget
Facebook has very very cleverly designed something where it's actually the users who behave
like gadgets and we've agreed to be locked down to a design on a Facebook page and the inbox is
where it is and the color scheme is where it is Facebook knows how we're going to behave it
it sets our privacy settings to suit itself and make knowing that we're probably going to find
it quite hard to switch them off or even find how to do that Facebook wants us to behave in
predictable ways and largely we do now that again might suit you it really doesn't suit me I don't
want to be the gadget so if these are tools I want them to be tools I take out use and I put away
when I want I don't want to think that I can't ever put them away and the time is fast approaching
where these tools are going to be impregnated into us in the form of tattoos in the form of chips
under our fingertips and all the science fiction is coming true and turning them off may actually
become impossible and again just looking into that future it's for you to decide whether you want
it and even if you decide yes I do want it do you want it at the pace it's coming because it's not
at the pace that you're determining it's coming at the pace of product life cycles that are designed
to I'm going to be honest relieve you as much of your money as possible as more and more regular
intervals in the name of innovation isn't that the real driver though it is it is commerce we
have laid ourselves at at the feet of commerce and we'll whereas many years ago we used to believe
in Kings and Queens and Victoria the Empress of India now it's it's the the the overlordship
of the big brands and for me them the sadness of that mediocrity is that some of my closest friends
the greatest act of revolution they have ever done and perhaps whatever doing their life has been
to hold off getting the latest iPhone if they don't want to be caught up or even worse to switch
away from horrible Apple to an Android that's their big high point and you know that's somehow for
me smacks is somehow disappointing in a world where the world's falling apart and some some people
are saying it is interesting I would suggest that some of the the strongest physical acts of rebellion
are still taking in places where this technology isn't as available it's still being used I guess by
the planners of it but the revolutionaries are probably not sitting on Facebook for 23 hours a day
yeah well that kind of takes takes me off onto a couple of other things that you've you've got on
the go you mentioned collusion and I noted that there are parts of your book up on the cats 3000
sites yeah the book collusion of mediocrity which I think is a fantastic title I've got I'm
really pleased this with this episode of the show I've got two authors who've come up with really
good titles because we're going to follow this with Becky Hogg who wrote barefoot into cyberspace
but I think the collusion of mediocrity is a fantastic title but that that book is there I say a
little bit amorphous and you admit is not exactly complete and may may never be complete yeah I think
the nature of it is that I have a paradox which is that the nature of the collusion of mediocrity
without spending too much time on it is it's the unspoken kind of agreement between people because
sometimes honestly can be uncomfortable so you accept mediocrity because it keeps you in the in a safe
zone the thing is that even when you do become honest and people are honest with people I think you
just get to another level of collusion and level two of the collusion is what I call forced revelation
where these days there's lots and lots of honesty but it becomes an excuse for just being honest
and moaning and not actually taking action and I'm worried that the book will just become a level two
collusion so what I've done is the book is just evolving actually interestingly online and people
are adding to it and I'm adding to it and it might take paper form it's not a problem to get a book
like that published but I'm quite up for the idea that you know stories are going to be added to it
and so it is kind of evolving amorphously because I'm hoping then it will fly under the radar of
its own potential mediocrity that sounded really up its own arse apologies to anyone listening
well if you're going to write on mediocrity that is the the trap you have to avoid falling into
well just to to bring us almost full circle if if you pardon the pun I don't use that one very
often on this show one of the expressions of the the theories that you came out within in
learning to dance with spiders was the theatre piece that you mentioned at the beginning text
which there was a performance on at the critical instant which which I which I saw and but that
I think showed a lot of the people at the conference in a very emotionally engaging way some of
the pitfalls of falling into the lap of technology how's how's that played developing now
so actually the version you saw was pretty finished at one level it was a play about two people
whose relationship in you might say the physical world had started to falter years ago but what
they were doing in their routine of work and and texting each other from trains and so on was
becoming ever more intimate online on the phone particularly and that's where people get to this
place where there are more virtual kisses than real ones and and then little by little you don't
notice the decline but what we're just hoping to do with it is the next step and it's a supposed
is an experiment in theater is these are part of this plays text conversations between two people
that we project onto the wall but we'd like to make it real in the theater that they're actually
on real devices texting for real and the possibility that when the audience comes in they're all given
a mobile device and they can also follow the text conversations by looking at the screen and
looking at the life theater which creates a new challenge that I think there is there in the world
what's more interesting to you the the screen or the thing that's before you so it would be a piece
of theater that actually tried to mirror the same thing that the characters are on stage have
actually got in there in their characters when when does the virtual world service and when does
it actually enslave us I guess that's part of it and in the case of text it's a tragedy really
because what it is is that people flee into a last-gast for tempered revive their relationships by
being more intimate through their fingertips and through the keyboard and I think it's nearly
always doomed to failure but I'd really love to hear from anybody anyone listening in to say
no it's not this is a new opportunity for us there's a new romantic movement that's going to come
through Facebook and mobile phone texting I've yet to be convinced of that oh yeah you haven't
you haven't been watching the videos of Facebook weddings on on YouTube then you know I've seen
them and you know people have been married in second life and divorced in second life in
the virtual world and somebody sued themselves because they found somebody cheating on second life
and all of this stuff is again come to come back to Sherry Terkel it's a melting pot where the
technological possibilities are running ahead of our consciousness to cope with them wow
I don't think I can top that one particularly given that my consciousness generally runs behind
everything else at this time of night I'm gonna say thank you very much then in that case
I don't think I can top that one and anything that I say after that's going to fall into that
collusion of mediocrity so I'm going to quit while we're ahead well it is funny that you know
you're interviewing me here on Skype and we're staring into laptops and you know maybe in the
past we've met for real okay thank you very much Paul see you again soon thank you very much good night
Paul leave his website combines cats 3,000 and rational madness at rationalmadness.wordpress.com
where you will also find the ebook the collusion of mediocrity the critical incident
unconference for 2012 has been announced on the theme of the eye take a look over the conference
plan for this year over at the critical incident website www thecriticalincident.com
we've more interviews coming up on the full circle podcast very soon for now I'm Robin
Kathleen thank you for listening and goodbye
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