Ask HN: Are we just reacting to technology?
That's a fear inducing sentiment. I'm not quite that pessimistic, but it feels like most people are just reacting to what they can do next in terms of technology, and I don't know that they have much choice.
We need to eliminate all these silly things we're doing with technology as possibilities, by doing them, before we get on to our true purpose. It's like debugging: you don't try things until you've eliminated other possibilities, eventually finding the true source of the problem.
Much of tech these days is focused on time-waste, video games and such, and I could get mad about it, but maybe it's all necessary. We need to do it, so we see that it doesn't give us a sense of "ultimate purpose", and then we can clearly see what we're really meant to do.
What we're really meant to do is probably stuff like invent the energy source of the future, go into space, cure cancer and these things, but maybe we can't see to doing that until we've fully saturated some of these lamer markets (thus creating pressure away from lame markets and into harder, better endeavors).
A goal to get away from distraction could be to figure out, not how to empty yourself of distractions, but how to saturate faster.
Just a thought.