“Unless the rate at which social antibodies evolve can increase to match the accelerating rate at which technological progress throws off new addictions, we’ll be increasingly unable to rely on customs to protect us. Unless we want to be canaries in the coal mine of each new addiction—the people whose sad example becomes a lesson to future generations—we’ll have to figure out for ourselves what to avoid and how. It will actually become a reasonable strategy (or a more reasonable strategy) to suspect everything new.”
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Over the past 20 years of computer use I’ve gone through many cycles of addiction, from hours at a Prestel terminal in the library (the internet before the web), too spending weeks completing Gauntlet II on the Amiga, to Google, Wordpress, Tumblr and Twitter.
I’ve always been a bit of a care-free techno-utopian. Until very recently I’ve seen people like Dr Susan Greenfield as part of the old-guard, the old generation who’ll never ‘get it’.
Slowly, over just the last couple of years, I’ve been starting to look more carefully at Carr, Lanier and Greenfield, looking at their concerns a bit more seriously.
Paul Graham’s essay The Acceleration of Addictiveness is a great exploration of this theme and this quote especially captures the real issue…
