Broadband Life and Internet Anxiety Disorder 181
ChipGuy writes "Broadband brings the world right to your laptop or your handheld. With it comes information, and along with it comes desire to stay connected, and on top of everything. Om Malik calls it Internet Anxiety Disorder. 'The rush to catch-up and living a six megabits per second lifestyle, is what I think is going to be first major malaise of the 21st century - Internet anxiety disorder,' he says. Firefox developer, Blake Ross thinks that 'Internet hardwires developing brains with a click-happy sense of urgency that will not defer to reality. We are addicted to information and seek it even when we know it's not available.' Others have described this info-addiction as Nerd Attention Deficiency Disorder."
Internet related dependence (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course the referenced links do contain valid points, particularly Rand's blog [randsinrepose.com]. What Rand alludes to however and needs to be learned is the ability to focus and extract the absolutely relevant information related to the task at hand. I've noticed in the undergraduates in particular that have come through the lab that they tend to try and multitask everything, talking on the phone, performing Internet related searches, writing their reports and listening to music while also running an experiment in the background. Almost always, mistakes ensue, the quality of the work suffers, wrong conclusions are drawn and it takes them a couple of months to learn to focus while eliminating some of the competing tasks to ensure quality work for the essential task at hand. Once they learn to focus, not only does the quality of their work improve, but also their ability to extract information from all sorts of tasks including Internet related work. Confusion goes away and is replaced by efficiency of thought and action.
Old standards ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Already about thirty years ago I observed people who ran obviously faulty pieces of code a second time hoping for a different outcome; my guess is that humans love voodo but that it ususally does not work. So I do not believe that there is another "Generation X" (whatever).
CC.
Anxiety disorder not new- Internet nothing special (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Old standards ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:True. (Score:0, Insightful)
which began, what, 14 years ago?
The longest 10 seconds in your life will be when you get your first pink slip, or when you hear a close relative of yours has died. So enjoy your innurnet line while you can...
We are information processing machines (Score:5, Insightful)
I think some people are addicted to labling everything as an addiction.
Maybe it has something to do with our rather bizzare cultural perception that if you're enjoying yourself you must be mentally ill.
Actually, now that I think about it, given the state of our culture, they might have a point.
KFG
Only In America (Score:2, Insightful)
Not New (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Hogwash. Stop It! (Score:2, Insightful)
"oops... forgot to go to work"... oopps... "forgot to do the chores"... "ooops for got to pick up the kids"... "oopps... forgot to FEED the kids"...
at that point you have a problem.
Re:Old standards ... (Score:3, Insightful)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operant_conditioning [wikipedia.org]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skinner_box [wikipedia.org]
You check the link and it has updated off schedule once, and it encourages you to check it repeatedly just in case.
For me when I run a faulty code segment a second time, I am just trying to figure out what the exact cause of the error is.
Is somewhat addictive. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Dying gasps of an older generation (Score:3, Insightful)
With regards to health, I think my original argument made allowances for that; if you are worried about your kids' health, you won't let them sti around on their asses all day. Brianrot and attention span have little to do with parental concerns at that point.
With regards to the fast paced, check up on
All I'm saying is that it is no less productive than playing around outside or throwing a wild party. It's a waste of time, true, but everyone wastes time. Physical activity is a copout answer; who feels mentally challenged playing baseball? Online, you are stimulating yourself at least, picking up new information and learning. Two sides of the same coin.
In all of the arguments that I've made with my parents over my 24 years of life, this is the only one that I really won. There are too many parallels, and they don't think they wasted their youth in a particularly bad way. The same way that if 20 years from now, I have a kid who thinks that GravSkating is the way of his generation, and I'm always telling him he should be stimulating his brain, he can criticize me for sitting on my ass all day and not getting anything accomplished, while at least he gets his blood pumping.
Every generation lives differently. We just need to accept that and try to steer them in their trends to be less wasteful. If my kid likes GravSkating, then so be it. But I'll do my damnedest to force him to appreciate the nuances of the game and make it a real investment of energy. The same way I wish my parents had taken an interest in my interests. My sisters play soccer, my parents can understand that.
Hence the Bridge example. My dad spent his college years playing Bridge. I wound up learning Bridge from friends, but he missed out on a real opportunity to interact with his kid by never passing it on. Playing bridge online would have been a lot of fun for me, and he at least would have felt better about my timesuck of choice, seeing some of his passtimes were being passed on.
I've started playing Go recently, and I think that's given me a new perspective on the generational gap. We can't force our kids to have our same interests, but we can find common interests that allow us to see that they are developing, despite our fears. Acceptance of that is probably the best thing we could ever do for them. I look at my Korean friends and see that most of them have parents who play Baduk (Go) and are in fact, very strong at it. Of those friends, the ones who learned the game from their parents seem to have a decent relationship with their parents, while those who didn't seem very distant. Granted, this is a small sample and doesn't reflect on Korean-American culture as a whole, and of course, only an parent interested in their children's development would bother teaching their kid a time-consuming game like that, but I think this is one of those examples that while not proving my point at least illustrates that it may be valid.
Eh... (Score:3, Insightful)
Constructs like that make me want to hit people with a baseball bat.
is what I think is going to be first major malaise of the 21st century
You mispelled "excuse"
Could be worse (Score:2, Insightful)
wrong (Score:1, Insightful)
what they call "reality" is just THEIR reality. its their take on how life is to be lived. ie without such desire for information, or at least such motivation to seek out such a desire.
again another example of selfish people dictating subjective views onto others
Really Nothing New (Score:2, Insightful)
The key, I've found as a busy college student, is simply to control the information influx (there is no line between information and entertainment, they are merely a spectrum so I'm going to refer to both as information). When I'm reading, I close my IM client. When I don't feel like it, I don't answer my phone (which can result in "call me or I'll think you're dead" messages from my mother during protracted periods of busyness). When I don't have time, I don't watch TV, the newest Netflix DVD or the newest episode of Battlestar Galactica that finished downloading that day. There are times when anyone, including myself, will fail in controlling the influx of information, but it is important to remember that the majority of information we are "addicted" to is unnecessary. Certainly in business a certain amount of quick response to VM, email, IM, snail mail, and faxes is necessary for both courtesy and business success (or just not getting fired), but the majority of information that people people find themselves awash in they partake in of their own free will. By this, of your own free will you can step out of that flow.
The same goes for TV, magazines, newspapers and even just gossiping and talking. As a personal example about six months ago I realized that despite how much I get out of The New Yorker's news articles, they took up too much time and we're the best use of that time for what I wanted to do. Most of the information influx we experience anyone can make such a choice about.
Re:We are information processing machines (Score:2, Insightful)