Addict Nation by Sandra Mohr Jane Velez-Mitchell Page B
Authors: Sandra Mohr Jane Velez-Mitchell
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really making us more productive, or could it simply be overwhelming us with a tsunami of data? The company-supplied smartphone is said to give employers a massive return on their investment in the devices. Suddenly, they have workers who are making the most of previously dead time, furiously e-mailing in the elevator, while they’re walking the halls, and even in the bathroom.
Most of us, in this Information Age, engage in some form of digital juggling. When I’m at work, I’m constantly jumping between two TV sets on two different news networks, two BlackBerrys with different e-mail lists, and a computer desktop with all sorts of other data, like news scripts and wire copy, not to mention that quaint, bulky phone with the old-school receiver on my desk. What can I say? Screen media is seductive. They made it that way!
There are times when I can feel overwhelmed and even a tad disoriented. Call it the “where was I?” syndrome. When I stop one task, my mind has to exit from that subject and approach the other task. Then, when I return to the initial subject, I have to reorient my mind and figure out where I left off. All of that takes time and energy. Constantly dipping in and out of different subjects and hopping from one communication device to another can be a time waster that can create a synthetic form of attention deficit disorder. There is growing evidence now that more and more people are superficially skimming reading material as opposed to really studying a piece of writing from beginning to end.
Is the Breadth of Our Knowledge
Expanding at the Expense of Its Depth?
The progressive nature of addiction is accelerating all these trends. It often seems that we have all been duped into becoming slaves to shiny gadgets just to make very rich people even richer. Our world is becoming smaller as we increasingly focus on the intricate, little gizmo in our hands, ignoring the big, exciting world around us. Meantime, the more information about ourselves we surrender, the more ammunition we give cyberpushers to control and manipulate us.
In the Atlantic , Nicholas Carr has a fascinating article entitled “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” He writes, “The faster we surf across the Web—the more links we click and pages we view—the more opportunities Google and other companies gain to collect information about us and to feed us advertisements. Most of the proprietors of the commercial Internet have a financial stake in collecting the crumbs of data we leave behind as we flit from link to link—the more crumbs, the better. The last thing these companies want is to encourage leisurely reading or slow, concentrated thought. It’s in their economic interest to drive us to distraction.”
It’s ironic that the baby boomer generation would have heralded the age of digital multitasking and websurfing. It’s the antithesis of the credo of our youth. In Doing Nothing—A History of Loafers, Loungers, Slackers, and Bums in America, Tom Lutz waxes poetic about the doing-nothing ethic of the 1960s cultural revolution. 21 He reminds us that we celebrated writers like Baba Ram Dass who told us that “striving, pushing, desperate grabbing at the brass ring—any and all ambitious desires—were worse than distractions; they were the very stuff that made nirvana impossible and were destroying the planet. One had to let go, drop out, be free.” Baba Ram Dass sums it all up with this: “Now is now. Are you going to be here or not?” 22 That’s the very question we need to ask ourselves the next time we hear our cell phone ping!
Chapter Four
THE STARGAZERS: Addicted to Celebrity
I am standing inside Madison Square Garden, one of the high citadels of celebrity worship. This is where pop superstars come to receive the genuflecting adoration of their swooning fans. I am here to bear witness to the newest goddess of the cybergeneration. Emerging from the darkness in a cloud of white smoke, Lady Gaga easily takes possession
Most of us, in this Information Age, engage in some form of digital juggling. When I’m at work, I’m constantly jumping between two TV sets on two different news networks, two BlackBerrys with different e-mail lists, and a computer desktop with all sorts of other data, like news scripts and wire copy, not to mention that quaint, bulky phone with the old-school receiver on my desk. What can I say? Screen media is seductive. They made it that way!
There are times when I can feel overwhelmed and even a tad disoriented. Call it the “where was I?” syndrome. When I stop one task, my mind has to exit from that subject and approach the other task. Then, when I return to the initial subject, I have to reorient my mind and figure out where I left off. All of that takes time and energy. Constantly dipping in and out of different subjects and hopping from one communication device to another can be a time waster that can create a synthetic form of attention deficit disorder. There is growing evidence now that more and more people are superficially skimming reading material as opposed to really studying a piece of writing from beginning to end.
Is the Breadth of Our Knowledge
Expanding at the Expense of Its Depth?
The progressive nature of addiction is accelerating all these trends. It often seems that we have all been duped into becoming slaves to shiny gadgets just to make very rich people even richer. Our world is becoming smaller as we increasingly focus on the intricate, little gizmo in our hands, ignoring the big, exciting world around us. Meantime, the more information about ourselves we surrender, the more ammunition we give cyberpushers to control and manipulate us.
In the Atlantic , Nicholas Carr has a fascinating article entitled “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” He writes, “The faster we surf across the Web—the more links we click and pages we view—the more opportunities Google and other companies gain to collect information about us and to feed us advertisements. Most of the proprietors of the commercial Internet have a financial stake in collecting the crumbs of data we leave behind as we flit from link to link—the more crumbs, the better. The last thing these companies want is to encourage leisurely reading or slow, concentrated thought. It’s in their economic interest to drive us to distraction.”
It’s ironic that the baby boomer generation would have heralded the age of digital multitasking and websurfing. It’s the antithesis of the credo of our youth. In Doing Nothing—A History of Loafers, Loungers, Slackers, and Bums in America, Tom Lutz waxes poetic about the doing-nothing ethic of the 1960s cultural revolution. 21 He reminds us that we celebrated writers like Baba Ram Dass who told us that “striving, pushing, desperate grabbing at the brass ring—any and all ambitious desires—were worse than distractions; they were the very stuff that made nirvana impossible and were destroying the planet. One had to let go, drop out, be free.” Baba Ram Dass sums it all up with this: “Now is now. Are you going to be here or not?” 22 That’s the very question we need to ask ourselves the next time we hear our cell phone ping!
Chapter Four
THE STARGAZERS: Addicted to Celebrity
I am standing inside Madison Square Garden, one of the high citadels of celebrity worship. This is where pop superstars come to receive the genuflecting adoration of their swooning fans. I am here to bear witness to the newest goddess of the cybergeneration. Emerging from the darkness in a cloud of white smoke, Lady Gaga easily takes possession
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