More, please, and faster

July 28, 2010

Paul Graham has a perceptive post on what he terms "the acceleration of addiction," describing how technological progress, by giving us more of what we want, will naturally tend to amplify compulsive behavior:

Technological progress means making things do more of what we want. When the thing we want is something we want to want, we consider technological progress good. If some new technique makes solar cells x% more efficient, that seems strictly better. When progress concentrates something we don't want to want—when it transforms opium into heroin—it seems bad. But it's the same process at work. No one doubts this process is accelerating, which means increasing numbers of things we like will be transformed into things we like too much.

I hadn't thought about it in those terms before, but of course he's right - and his observation explains a lot (though he overlooks how commercial interests will tend to amplify the amplification process, as companies compete to profit from our compulsions). The recent evolution of the web, as a consumer technology, can to a considerable degree be seen as the product of the competition among technology companies - Facebook, Google, Twitter, etc. - to feed our native and not necessarily rational craving for new information.

Posted by nick at July 28, 2010 06:10 PM

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Those firms you name... they get more than just money out of the deal. Our distraction is the same thing as their interrogation: they gain increasingly detailed profiles of us. And they gain more than information - they gain a lot of power to modulate what we see and what we are led to.

Posted by: Tom Lord at July 28, 2010 10:26 PM

The relatively recent reality TV craze seems to have taken the same cycle; bigger, better and badder. I was thinking about this only the other day, how low can they go before the audience move on.

When I read Paul's comments about his addition to the internet I couldn't help but wonder why we don't pondered more on our needs as opposed to going with our wants. It's somewhat analogous to swimming down the river with the current, or up against the current. One direction is exhilarating and fun, however the reward is relatively short lived (and it's addictive). The other is concentrated effort and difficult, the rewards are not immediate but they are there given enough effort, this path generally doesn't become addictive. I surmise that for this reason most folks swim down the river, effort for a distant reward seems like a concept we no longer value enough, individually or as a society.

Posted by: William at July 28, 2010 10:35 PM

We are distracted to distraction. Meanwhile, climate chaos that will kill off, cook off, 99 percent of the human species in the next 30 generations of humankind, looms large, and everyone is playing games with distracting things. Wake up, people!

Posted by: bloomingidiot at July 29, 2010 01:18 AM

The digital society discovered desires which, differently from needs, are infinite. Desires can accomodate infinite products. Products of the mind, maybe "free" products but nonetheless products. The information society as a mirror of the mind stimulates the endless cravings of the ego thus sequestrating our attention.
Neil Postman said that "Huxley feared that what we love will ruin us.".

Posted by: Ivo Quartiroli at July 29, 2010 04:42 AM

More, please, and faster

July 28, 2010

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