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I was in New York during Hurricane Sandy,

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and this little white dog called Maui

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was staying with me.

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Half the city was dark because of a power cut,

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and I was living on the dark side.

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Now, Maui was terrified of the dark,

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so I had to carry him up the stairs,

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actually down the stairs first, for his walk,

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and then bring him back up.

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I was also hauling gallons of bottles of water

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up to the seventh floor every day.

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And through all of this,

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I had to hold a torch between my teeth.

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The stores nearby were out of flashlights

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and batteries and bread.

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For a shower, I walked 40 blocks

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to a branch of my gym.

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But these were not the major preoccupations of my day.

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It was just as critical for me to be the first person in

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at a cafe nearby with extension cords and chargers

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to juice my multiple devices.

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I started to prospect under the benches of bakeries

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and the entrances of pastry shops for plug points.

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I wasn't the only one.

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Even in the rain, people stood between Madison and 5th Avenue

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under their umbrellas charging their cell phones

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from outlets on the street.

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Nature had just reminded us

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that it was stronger than all our technology,

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and yet here we were, obsessed about being wired.

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I think there's nothing like a crisis

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to tell you what's really important and what's not,

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and Sandy made me realize that our devices

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and their connectivity matter to us

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right up there with food and shelter.

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The self as we once knew it no longer exists,

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and I think that an abstract, digital universe

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has become a part of our identity,

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and I want to talk to you about what I think that means.

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I'm a novelist, and I'm interested in the self

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because the self and fiction have a lot in common.

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They're both stories, interpretations.

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You and I can experience things without a story.

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We might run up the stairs too quickly

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and we might get breathless.

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But the larger sense that we have of our lives,

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the slightly more abstract one, is indirect.

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Our story of our life is based on direct experience,

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but it's embellished.

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A novel needs scene after scene to build,

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and the story of our life needs an arc as well.

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It needs months and years.

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Discrete moments from our lives are its chapters.

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But the story is not about these chapters.

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It's the whole book.

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It's not only about the heartbreak and the happiness,

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the victories and the disappointments,

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but it's because how because of these,

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and sometimes, more importantly, in spite of these,

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we find our place in the world

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and we change it and we change ourselves.

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Our story, therefore, needs two dimensions of time:

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a long arc of time that is our lifespan,

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and the timeframe of direct experience

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that is the moment.

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Now the self that experiences directly

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can only exist in the moment,

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but the one that narrates needs several moments,

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a whole sequence of them,

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and that's why our full sense of self

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needs both immersive experience

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and the flow of time.

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Now, the flow of time is embedded in everything,

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in the erosion of a grain of sand,

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in the budding of a little bud into a rose.

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Without it, we would have no music.

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Our own emotions and state of mind

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often encode time,

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regret or nostalgia about the past,

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hope or dread about the future.

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I think that technology has altered that flow of time.

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The overall time that we have for our narrative,

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our lifespan, has been increasing,

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but the smallest measure, the moment, has shrunk.

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It has shrunk because our instruments enable us

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in part to measure smaller and smaller units of time,

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and this in turn has given us a more granular understanding

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of the material world,

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and this granular understanding

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has generated reams of data

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that our brains can no longer comprehend

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and for which we need more and more complicated computers.

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All of this to say that the gap

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between what we can perceive and what we can measure

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is only going to widen.

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Science can do things with and in a picosecond,

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but you and I are never going to have the inner experience

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of a millionth of a millionth of a second.

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You and I answer only to nature's rhythm and flow,

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to the sun, the moon and the seasons,

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and this is why we need that long arc of time

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with the past, the present and the future

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to see things for what they are,

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to separate signal from noise

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and the self from sensations.

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We need time's arrow to understand cause and effect,

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not just in the material world,

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but in our own intentions and our motivations.

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What happens when that arrow goes awry?

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What happens when time warps?

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So many of us today have the sensation

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that time's arrow is pointing everywhere

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and nowhere at once.

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This is because time doesn't flow in the digital world

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in the same way that it does in the natural one.

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We all know that the Internet has shrunk space

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as well as time.

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Far away over there is now here.

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News from India is a stream on my smartphone app

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whether I'm in New York or New Delhi.

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And that's not all.

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Your last job, your dinner reservations from last year,

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your former friends, lie on a flat plain with today's friends,

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because the Internet also archives,

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and it warps the past.

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With no distinction left between the past,

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the present and the future, and the here or there,

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we are left with this moment everywhere,

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this moment that I'll call the digital now.

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Just how can we prioritize

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in the landscape of the digital now?

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This digital now is not the present,

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because it's always a few seconds ahead,

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with Twitter streams that are already trending

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and news from other time zones.

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This isn't the now of a shooting pain in your foot

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or the second that you bite into a pastry

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or the three hours that you lose yourself in a great book.

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This now bears very little physical

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or psychological reference to our own state.

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Its focus, instead, is to distract us

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at every turn on the road.

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Every digital landmark is an invitation

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to leave what you are doing now to go somewhere else

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and do something else.

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Are you reading an interview by an author?

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Why not buy his book? Tweet it. Share it.

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Like it. Find other books exactly like his.

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Find other people reading those books.

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Travel can be liberating,

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but when it is incessant, we become

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permanent exiles without repose.

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Choice is freedom, but not when it's constantly

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for its own sake.

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Not just is the digital now far from the present,

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but it's in direct competition with it,

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and this is because not just am I absent from it,

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but so are you.

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Not just are we absent from it, but so is everyone else.

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And therein lies its greatest convenience and horror.

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I can order foreign language books in the middle of the night,

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shop for Parisian macarons,

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and leave video messages that get picked up later.

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At all times, I can operate

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at a different rhythm and pace from you,

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while I sustain the illusion

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that I'm tapped into you in real time.

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Sandy was a reminder

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of how such an illusion can shatter.

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There were those with power and water,

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and those without.

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There are those who went back to their lives,

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and those who are still displaced

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after so many months.

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For some reason, technology seems to perpetuate

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the illusion for those who have it that everyone does,

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and then, like an ironic slap in the face,

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it makes it true.

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For example, it's said that there are more people

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in India with access to cell phones than toilets.

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Now if this rift, which is already so great

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in many parts of the world,

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between the lack of infrastructure and the spread of technology,

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isn't somehow bridged,

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there will be ruptures between the digital

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and the real.

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For us as individuals who live in the digital now

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and spend most of our waking moments in it,

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the challenge is to live in two streams of time

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that are parallel and almost simultaneous.

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How does one live inside distraction?

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We might think that those younger than us,

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those who are born into this, will adapt more naturally.

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Possibly, but I remember my childhood.

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I remember my grandfather revising

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the capitals of the world with me.

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Buda and Pest were separated by the Danube,

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and Vienna had a Spanish riding school.

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If I were a child today, I could easily learn this information

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with apps and hyperlinks,

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but it really wouldn't be the same,

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because much later, I went to Vienna,

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and I went to the Spanish riding school,

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and I could feel my grandfather right beside me.

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Night after night, he took me up on the terrace,

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on his shoulders, and pointed out Jupiter

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and Saturn and the Great Bear to me.

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And even here, when I look at the Great Bear,

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I get back that feeling of being a child,

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hanging onto his head and trying to balance myself

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on his shoulder,

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and I can get back that feeling of being a child again.

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What I had with my grandfather was wrapped

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so often in information and knowledge and fact,

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but it was about so much more

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than information or knowledge or fact.

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Time-warping technology challenges

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our deepest core,

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because we are able to archive the past

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and some of it becomes hard to forget,

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even as the current moment

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is increasingly unmemorable.

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We want to clutch, and we are left instead

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clutching at a series of static moments.

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They're like soap bubbles that disappear when we touch them.

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By archiving everything, we think that we can store it,

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but time is not data.

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It cannot be stored.

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You and I know exactly what it means like

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to be truly present in a moment.

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It might have happened while we were

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playing an instrument,

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or looking into the eyes of someone we've known

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for a very long time.

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At such moments, our selves are complete.

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The self that lives in the long narrative arc

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and the self that experiences the moment

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become one.

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The present encapsulates the past

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and a promise for the future.

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The present joins a flow of time

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from before and after.

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I first experienced these feelings with my grandmother.

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I wanted to learn to skip, and she found an old rope

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and she tucked up her sari

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and she jumped over it.

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I wanted to learn to cook, and she kept me in the kitchen,

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cutting, cubing and chopping for a whole month.

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My grandmother taught me that things happen

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in the time they take, that time can't be fought,

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and because it will pass and it will move,

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we owe the present moment our full attention.

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Attention is time.

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One of my yoga instructors once said

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that love is attention,

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and definitely from my grandmother,

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love and attention were one and the same thing.

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The digital world cannibalizes time,

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and in doing so, I want to suggest

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that what it threatens

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is the completeness of ourselves.

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It threatens the flow of love.

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But we don't need to let it.

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We can choose otherwise.

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We've seen again and again

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just how creative technology can be,

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and in our lives and in our actions,

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we can choose those solutions and those innovations

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and those moments that restore the flow of time

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instead of fragmenting it.

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We can slow down and we can tune in

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to the ebb and flow of time.

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We can choose to take time back.

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Thank you.

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(Applause)