Good to see people continuing to recognize this troubling fact and the community trying to come to terms with it.
Increasingly we lose this sense of surprise, so that we are no longer overly
amazed at anything and, ultimately, find satisfaction in everything—this is
what is called historical sensibility, historical cultivation. Stated
noneuphemistically: the massive influx of impressions is so great; surprising,
barbaric, and violent things press so overpoweringly—'balled up into hideous
clumps'—in on the youthful soul; that it can save itself only by taking
recourse in premeditated stupidity.
No doubt there is a very human pattern at work that hasn't changed over the centuries. Also no doubt that there is a technological amplifier at work as well.
I look at it like money: having lots of money tends to make you more of what you already are. So if you're a jerk, being rich is just going to exacerbate that. In a way, then, being able to handle great wealth is an indication of a very stable (and perhaps dull) personality.
Technology is doing a very similar thing with distractions. Some folks are easily distracted. Some are not. As technology improves, people who are less-easily distracted are finding they are spending more and more of their time plugged in. The best argument here is self-reports: many people freely acknowledge that they spend more time plugged in than they are comfortable with.
As far as solutions, I tried a couple myself, along with some volunteers from HN. Didn't get a lot of traction, sadly. "Purposeful interruptions" was the line we were pursuing. At the time of the essay, my money was on a new form of morality taking hold -- that it simply won't be "cool" to spend too much time physically inert. That hasn't happened, sadly.
PG also wrote an essay a few months after mine along these lines. I keep hoping that with so many smart people looking at this we will start seeing some breakthroughs.
"Now, the true city is in my opinion the one we just described--a
healthy city, as it were. But, if you want to, let's look at a
feverish city, too. Nothing stands in the way....This healthy
one isn't adequate any more, but must already be gorged with a
bulky mass of things."
It's an inherent part of being human to see the present day as the end of days.
We keep inventing these entertaining and pleasurable things, and at first we get lost in them. We are like children playing with our new toy. And after a while we calm the hell down, we develop patterns and social customs that help us use the toy for entertainment in a harmless way.
You might think technology is bad, but personally I think there's nothing wrong with WoW or heroin. It's just that people can drive in a car at 150mph+ recklessly, all day, stealing money from their families or they can use it to get somewhere and occasionally for fun.