Technology is Heroin (2009)

Learning how to deal with the effects of technology, the instant gratification and the multi-sensory stimulation it provides is, indeed, one of the great challenges of the modern age.

The writer's specific examples grate on me. I do not think that most of them are supportable - they seem to originate from a mono-cultural understanding of the world which muddles influences from non-Western cultures with the effects of technology. His description of life in rural America is important, not because of the similarities to life in other historical cultures, but because of the differences.

Take the music. There are more cultures in human history than merely rural America. Many of them have historically relied on drum-heavy music.

Not just African music, either. Rhythm based music (often with spoken words) has been important to many cultures and is not some sort of new demon fostered by technology. I would "blame" multi-culturalism on its popularity, not iTunes.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pxk7c38Q-lQ

I do not believe in the slightest that intelligence is going down - not unless you compare the elite of the past to the failing students of the present. After all, the vast majority of people either didn't have access to much reading material or have the time to peruse it.

We now have access to an always-on research library through the Internet. Does everyone use it to its full potential? No, but there are a surprisingly high number of people who go out and read research studies and long-form articles of their own volition. I do not think books are innately superior.

Does his suggestion that Indians and Chinese are writing the software, which Westerners merely consume, really jive with your experiences?

The drug war saved our country?

I do not want to fall prey to middlebrow dismissal, but these arguments unnerve me and I think the point could have been made in a better way.

The author goes into delightful depth about the history of addiction, but then implies at the end ("things that take mor brain time win") that after all that we haven't evolved any defenses against it.

But there are checks and balances against addiction in our culture. Your friends start to get concerned. You lose your job and can't pay your WoW bill anymore.

And these events afford us a time for reflection. I specifically don't do World of Warcraft (or amphetamines) because I know they're good at capturing my "brain time". My fear is bad for WoW's growth.

I do agree Internet addiction is a public health crisis. But I don't think we're as powerless to take it on, both individually an collectively, as the author implies.

If you like this kind of Science Fiction check out Neuromancer by William Gibson

But seriously saying Technology is Heroin is like saying Obama is Hitler.

Heroin is a serious fucking drug that will destroy your life. If your a heroin addict you can't just stop doing heroin and go back packing in the forest for a week.

Yet people take breaks from technology and the internet all the time and are perfectly fine. Theres plenty of technology to be afraid of; dying in a car accident, sitting in a chair too much, but Instagraming every meal you eat is not one of them, thats just a little weird.

Although I strongly agree with the basic premise -- namely, that many of us could benefit from some reflection on our screen-gazing habits -- after the Brief History of Drugs portion of this piece, it drifts off into speculation that could be attributed to a William Gibson story. The comparison here might be valid, but this piece could use some more info on how technology measurably affects quality of life, quality of social health, and other factors.

This guy doesn't know shit about music. - A music teacher.

TV, video games, internet - information technology is evolving towards Matrix-like virtual environment. It's not going to be forced on us by aliens, or intelligent machines. We are going to build it, and we are going to like it.

Cochlear implants and artificial retinas can already inject information directly into our brains, bypassing our senses. Artificial skin is being developed to provide a sense of touch to prosthetic limbs. Direct brain to brain communication was demonstrated, where one person was able to move another person's finger as if it was his own finger.

A virtual reality technology has been pretty lame so far. However, if traditional input/output devices are bypassed, people can experience it in a natural way. A brain does not care where the data came from - a computer, or your eyes - it's all just electrical signals. As long as that data is realistic enough, your brain will believe it. Every sensory experience from a real world can be recorded, analyzed, modified, and recreated in a virtual world. Sound, touch, smell, taste - they are just patterns of electrical activity to our brains.

After the technology is available, people are going to gradually migrate to this new social environment. Your physical body remains in the real world, where it can be connected to a sophisticated life-support machine, but most of the time you spent in the "Matrix". Virtual reality will be interfaced with a real world. There's no reason why it should be a closed, isolated environment. Anyone will be able to perform their jobs in the real world from the virtual one. A doctor can monitor your health as you lie down strapped to your life support machine. Even a surgery can be done remotely. If people don't want to leave the virtual world to do something in the real one, the technology will appear to make it possible.

Now, back to the entertainment - can you imagine being a god? Anything you can imagine will be possible. More than that - anything that anyone can imagine will be shared and experienced. Just like in the real world, people will create, buy, and sell good designs. A design can be anything - from a new pair of shoes, to an entire planet, to a weird feeling, to an experience of being a spider.

Your brain will believe it's real. Any you're going to like it.

Seriously? What arbitrary metric of cultural value is this guy using other than nostalgia? He makes a truly fascinating comparison, but like many of you have said, his statistics are dubious. Technology's influence on evolution / selection in modern society pushes us towards efficiency, connectivity, knowledge, and truth. Its influence on art/music is profound, too, but we can't qualify art anyway

Heroin brought euphoria reading Wikipedia has made me knowledgeable on many diverse subjects and those video games might have increased my focus and problem solving skills. Video games and to a lesser extent television are stimulating, while most drugs are not.

Some good points, but Technology is a stimulant not a depressant (unless you spend all your time on facebook looking at your friends' pictures), so it's more like Cocaine.

I think the problem is that there is too much content available, and it paradoxically reduces interest.