On Distraction

It's almost a cliche to state that the state of technology is using the human condition aggressively against itself. Entire industries have popped up around the anxiety that technology seems to create in us; mindfulness, exercise, drugs, self help, community etcetera. All available from the convenient little black mirror in your hand.

I realised, oh, about a year ago, that I had been choking myself on the sweet syrup of the internet. I stopped, at first, with facebook. Then deleted twitter. I still clung onto one "social network"; reddit. I thought it couldn't be too bad, I was learning so much from it. And I was. 

Every day. 

All Day. 

Most hours of my day. 

And still I persisted. 

I tried starving myself. And yet I still grabbed whatever content I could from other websites. I had an entire list of relevant, slightly clickbait-y news websites I followed - io9, the verge, vice, kotaku, to name a few. I would spend hours in class combing through their newest "stories". I would go back to reddit because it had even more.

I realised that the only thing that was actually making me be addicted to all of these things is the very medium they're attached to: The Internet. Our greatest invention of our entire history - putting thousands of bits of information at our fingertips, and thousands of specialised interests and communities seconds away. A glorious invention that allowed us to simultaneously talk to everybody and change minds around the world. To find whatever we wanted, and see it in any light we wanted to, because on the internet, you are sure to have somebody agree with you. It allowed us to bring such information so quickly to people. We could spread a lie to millions and trick people to believing that they have full control of their own thoughts, of their desires, that they are impossible to fool. It allowed the greatest predators on the planet, our very organizations, to finally become people. Entities with millions of dollars and enough computerpower to bend the instincts of billions to their own goals.

We're living in the arse-end of history where corporations who supply us with so many goods figured out that they can use technology to leverage the sub-conscious of man to their own ends. We're slaves to our own desires, and those desires can be carefully curated on the dopamine highway of the web.

The internet has allowed us to believe that the words on a screen are actual people and that communities are active when they are, instead, manufactured.

Facebook gives you friendship without that which makes it worthwhile - actual people. Twitter gives you the arena of soundbites and arguments without acknowledging that a name can be both a person and not - making you effectively vie against the idea of a person, instead of the tone, growl and blat of a real one. Reddit makes you think that it's constant stream of facts are somehow improving you, by simulating an agora. Meanwhile you're fed the intellectual equivalent of corn syrup - through a mouthtube. Your brain cannot process the vast information it's confronted with.

For us to appreciate anything anymore, we need to learn that the internet is ours. 

We are the workers in a factory we're convinced is actually a spa, our instincts hardly our own.