In Silicon Valley, the herd is going one direction very fast, kicking up clouds of dust. It was a simple journalistic impulse to say: Why are we going that direction so quickly? Then I also saw my own behavior: watching the certainly magnetic, if not magical allure of my device. I thought something’s going on here, and as I was saying it, scientists were beginning to ask the same question. So it was a pretty good holy trinity journalistic of an almost overwhelmingly conventional wisdom, science questioning it, and a gut instinct that my own behavior was changing profoundly.
Are all the modern devices and digital conveniences we have
at our disposal — from the web and social media to smartphones and tablets —
making us more distracted and less able to concentrate? And is this harming our
ability to think and be creative, and therefore by extension harming society as
a whole? It’s a question that rears its head from time to time. One of the
latest expressions of this fear comes from Joe Kraus, a serial entrepreneur who
is now a partner with Google Ventures and gave a presentation recently about
his concerns, offering an alternative concept he calls “Slow Tech.” But is this
really something that we need to be afraid of?
the incessant demands of cellphones and social media, not to
mention email and other forms of distraction,are making it difficult for us to
connect with other people and including our families.
We are creating and encouraging a culture of distraction
where we are increasingly disconnected from the people and events around us,
and increasingly unable to engage in long-form thinking. People now feel
anxious when their brains are unstimulated.
Smart phones have made many technological advances that has enabled us to access social networks such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram at our fingertips. With that being said, nowadays, people would rather be staring at their smart phones, looking through their social networking news feed than actually socializing and talking to people in the real world. So thus raises the question, are you technologically addicted? Does any of these scenarios look familiar to you? Think about it
