Attention! There’s Life Beyond the Digital.

To the Editor:

Re “Fight the Powerful Forces Stealing Our Attention,” by D. Graham Burnett, Alyssa Loh and Peter Schmidt (Opinion guest essay, Nov. 27):

In 2010, frustrated that I had to admonish the students in my large sophomore lecture course to turn off their cellphones at the start of each class, only to see them return to them immediately at the end, I told them a story.

When I went to college, I explained, there were no cellphones. After class, we thought about what we had just learned, often discussing it with our friends. Why not try an experiment: for one week, no cellphones for 10 minutes after every class? Only three of the 80 students accepted the challenge, and not surprisingly, they reported back that they were thrilled to find themselves learning more and enjoying it more thoroughly.

So, hats off to the authors of this essay who are teaching attentiveness. I fear, though, that they are trying to empty the ocean with a teaspoon. Would that they prove me wrong.

Richard Etlin
New York
The writer is distinguished university professor emeritus at the School of Architecture, Planning & Preservation, University of Maryland, College Park.

To the Editor:

Of course, we have lost a good deal of our ability to focus and concentrate with the persistence of digital information gnawing at our attention spans. While this is not a new problem, it has been grossly intensified.

The answer in the past, and the answer now, is libraries: places of quiet reading, contemplation, study, thinking, even daydreaming.

To put away electronic media for a time and enjoy the silence of a library is a gift for personal balance and tranquillity.

Bonnie Collier
Branford, Conn.
The writer is a retired associate director for administration, Yale Law Library.

To the Editor:

Some years ago I returned to the tiny Greek island my family left in 1910. “There’s nothing there,” everybody said. But the nothing that was there was the absolute antidote to most of the malaise of modern life, or, as my daughter calls it, “the digital hellscape.”

The effect was immediate. No credit cards, no taxi apps, no alarm systems, none of it. Just the sounds of the goat bells on the hills and people drinking coffee and staring at the water and talking to each other. And it wasn’t boring at all.

Jane Warden
Malibu, Calif.

A Party Pooper’s View of the New Climate Deal

To the Editor:

Re “In Climate First, Pact Seeks Shift on Fossil Fuels” (front page, Dec. 14):

I hate to be a climate summit party pooper, but the bottom line is that the new deal being celebrated is not legally binding and can’t, on its own, force any country to act. History has shown that if a country isn’t forced to act, it usually won’t.

How do I know that? We just had the hottest year on record, with global fossil-fuel emissions soaring to record highs. We had agreed not to go there. Here we are.

Douglas G. Williams
Minneapolis

The Biden Impeachment Inquiry: ‘Republicans, Have You No Shame?’

To the Editor:

Re “Impeachment Inquiry Approved, Despite No Proof of Biden Crime” (front page, Dec. 14):

This is a sad day for our country. Republicans voted to have an impeachment inquiry into President Biden without having any basis on which to proceed. Why did they take this unprecedented step? They were responding to the wishes of Donald Trump.

The constitutional power of the House of Representatives to impeach is a solemn duty reserved for instances where a president has committed “high crimes or misdemeanors.” In this case, there is not a shred of evidence of any wrongdoing, only a father’s love for his surviving son.

Republicans, have you no shame? You will rue the day you voted in such an unethical manner. To use impeachment as a political tool in the 2024 election is an embarrassment for the whole world to see.

I am afraid that we have reached the point where retribution is one party’s focus instead of the myriad needs of the people of this nation.

Ellen Silverman Popper
Queens

The 1968 and 2024 Elections

To the Editor:

Reading about how President Biden is losing support among young pro-Palestinian college kids takes me back to my youth. I’m a baby boomer, and this reminds me of the 1968 presidential election between Richard Nixon and Hubert Humphrey.

So many of my generation were so angry about the Vietnam War and how Vice President Humphrey had backed President Lyndon B. Johnson’s handling of the war that many of us refused to vote for Humphrey. Nixon was elected, and the war continued.

As President Biden often says, an election is a choice. However, one can also choose not to vote. Those of us who refused to vote for Humphrey may well have tipped the election to Nixon, and with it all of the consequences that followed.

It is a cliché that the perfect is the enemy of the good, but there is a lot of truth to it. I fervently hope we don’t make that mistake in 2024.

Stuart Math
New York

The A.I. Stakes

To the Editor:

Re “How Money, Ego and Fear Lit A.I.’s Fuse” (“The A.I. Race” series, front page, Dec. 4):

Although the history of artificial intelligence may read like a struggle between those favoring cautious development and those intent on advancing the technology rapidly with fewer restrictions, it was inevitable that the latter would come out on top.

Given the resources required to scale the technology, it could be developed only with the support of parties with enormous computing power and very deep pockets (in other words, Google, Microsoft, Amazon and Meta).

And in return for their investments of billions of dollars, it is hardly surprising that those competing parties would demand rapid advancement with fewer restrictions in the hope of controlling the future of an industry that holds the promise of spectacular profit.

In retrospect, the proponents of a cautious approach to the development of A.I. never stood a chance.

Michael Silk
Laguna Woods, Calif.

Veterans’ Suicides by Firearm

To the Editor:

Re “U.S. Rate of Suicide by Firearm Reaches Record Level, Report Says” (news article, Dec. 2):

The increasing use of firearms in suicides is particularly concerning among veterans. Suicide rates among veterans are twice as high as among civilians, and veterans are twice as likely as civilians to use a firearm in a suicide attempt. Younger veterans are at especially high risk; those under the age of 55 have the highest rates of suicide by firearm.

New data from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs offers a glimmer of hope: New York State is bucking the trend. It saw a 13 percent decrease in firearm-related suicides by veterans in 2021. That conforms with research findings that states with stricter gun control policies experience fewer firearm-related suicides.

Saving lives means reducing access to lethal means.

Derek Coy
New York
The writer, an Iraq veteran, is senior program officer for veterans’ health at the New York Health Foundation.