It may be decades until we know what living in a state of constant distraction will do to us.
Interpretation
The long-term effects of constant distraction on our lives are unknown and may take decades to understand.
In this quote, Douglas Rushkoff emphasizes the urgency of evaluating the implications of living in an age filled with distractions. He suggests that while we are caught up in our immediate experiences and technologies, the profound effects on our mental health, relationships, and societal structures may only become apparent much later, urging a deeper contemplation of our current lifestyles.
In practice
This quote can be shared in a seminar on mental health awareness to highlight the importance of focus.
Like most early enthusiasts, I always thought the way the Internet encouraged multitasking made users less vulnerable to manipulation, while simultaneously exploiting even more of our brain's capacity than before. Apparently not.
The faux now of Twitter updates and things pinging at you - all the pulses from digitality that we try to keep up with because we sense that there's something going on that we need to tap into - are artifacts, or symptoms of living in this atemporal reality. And it's not any worse than living in the 'time is money' reality that we're leaving.
Treating an age group as a demographic requires coming up with something that's common to every single one of them. Right?... So it's reductionist in that it reduces an entire segment of civilization down to one person with one habit.
Brains are tricky and adaptable organs. For all the 'neuroplasticity' allowing our brains to reconfigure themselves to the biases of our computers, we are just as neuroplastic in our ability to eventually recover and adapt.
As popular culture becomes more presentist, we move away from entertainment as the vicarious experience of a narrative - as watching someone else's story - and much more toward enacting one's own story. Moving away from myths and toward fantasy role-playing games, away from movies and toward videogames.
The first step toward maintaining autonomy in any programmed environment is to be aware that there's programming going on. It's as simple as understanding the commercials are there to help sell things. And that TV shows are there to sell commercials, and so on.
What needs to be kept in mind is both that capitalism is a hyper-abstract impersonal structure and that it would be nothing without our co-operation.
In a capitalist society, all human relationships are voluntary. Men are free to cooperate or not, to deal with one another or not, as their own individual judgments, convictions and interests dictate.
What region of the earth is not full of our calamities?
A kingdom man is a man who visibly demonstrates the comprehensive rule of God underneath the Lordship of Jesus Christ in every area of his life.
Only the small secrets need to be protected. The large ones are kept secret by public incredulity.
Israel claims it needs nuclear weapons as a deterrent against any threat to its existence. The Arab world in return feels that this is an imbalanced system; there is a sense of humiliation and impotence.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.