We’re creating a culture of distraction

We created our distractions, and we will surely limit them if doing so becomes worthwhile.

If a company that banned non-enterprise smartphones during work hours was more profitable than one that did not, if the difference was great enough, the banners would quickly overtake everyone else.

This is where culture comes from.

Perhaps some of the most enlightening years of my life were towards the end of high school, when my computer died. At the time I was going through a youthful phase of freeing myself from worldly attachment. I just didn't bother fixing it or getting another. All my electronics and possessions, save for my stereo system, some books, and writing tools were packed away or sold. I wore pretty much the same clothes every day.

At school, I got in trouble for writing my essays on paper, when they were to be typed. I had no way of communicating with my friends who were all using cellphones and IM, so I just talked to them at school if I saw them. If I wanted to play video games, I went to the arcade, and since I had no car, it was always a fun adventure getting there and back. From the perspective of others, I was becoming an outcast. From my new perspective, they were the outcasts - out of touch with themselves, mindless robots in an artificial reality.

I spent my time reading books, writing my thoughts down, sketching ideas, taking walks, observing humans and nature, introspecting, and developing my personal philosophy and plans for the future.

Eventually I grew out of the phase, bought a bunch of new stuff, including a new computer, and got addicted to the Internet harder than ever. It led to a lot of great things - getting better at programming, participating in a bunch of online communities, making money, sharing my work and thoughts, and finding inspiration from others. However, there is always a nagging feeling that my younger self is questioning my lifestyle.

No matter how far in the zone I am, how much effort I take to remove the distractions from my environment, how secluded a place I go to get away from it all - I cannot reach the level of clarity and the perspective from those days. Just knowing that sweet feeling that awaits once I am jacked into a live connection again, and hit the browser tab, is enough.

The crux is not a culture of distraction - it is that our culture, especially our technology, is too heavily skewed towards consumption over creation. To make full use of our humanity, we need to be able to take the time to look inside ourselves - we need to allow ourselves to be distracted from within. The Internet by nature creates connections outwards - perhaps balance can be restored by finding its inverse. An Intronet?

A computer, much like paper and other creative mediums, is an impressive tool for exploring and expressing the inner self. An Intronet may actually be a cultural shift in computing rather than a technological development.

I don't think you quite got what I am trying to say. Addictive smartphone checking isn't culture, it is a problem that culture will be generated to solve. (Well, it could also turn out to be not nearly as much of an issue as we think it is, and then we will all forget about it save for the odd blog post making fun of how we were scared of something as normal as walking or watching a movie.)

Arguably, psychodynamic therapy is a form of your described Intronet. It's the practice of reflecting on things already present (memories, repeated thoughts, patterns of behavior, even dreams at times) and hypothesizing insightful connections. It doesn't emphasize the acquisition of new knowledge from outside sources.

Many have discarded psychodynamic and other long form therapies for practical reasons (expense, indefinite time commitment), but perhaps regular time slots for forming connections by exploring inwards — rather than from new information from the world — is the key to achieving balance.

Mindfulness, meditation, and so on are also included in this. Psychodynamic therapy happens to offer a verbal approach.

Here, let me feed your habit a little more. ;-)

I don't think it's about validating your existence. I think it's that internet communities are gradually replacing more traditional forms of interaction. We, even introverts, still crave some amount of interaction; if we don't get useful interaction elsewhere, we can maybe get it online.

HN, and email, and everything like it becomes a lot less important to me if I've spent the day having fun with other people. (Counterpoint: I also wind down on HN after a stressful day of dealing with other people.)