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The Acceleration of Addictiveness

paulgraham.com

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Re: The Acceleration of Addictiveness

#31

Post by sendos »

One problem that people who work with computers for a living have versus people who don't, is that, if you are an internet addict and you are, e.g. a nurse, you can always just avoid computers altogether for, say a week or a month, if your addiction gets out of hand.

But for people who work with a computer for their day job, avoiding the cause of the addiction is much tougher.

It's like if a TV critic had a TV addiction. He/She couldn't just stop watching TV altogether to defeat the addiction.

Sometimes I think the only solution for extreme cases is to take a sabbatical from work and become something like a waiter for a few months. No computers needed and lots of human interaction.

Re: The Acceleration of Addictiveness

#32

Post by andreyf »

Sounds familiar:

Anathem is set on and around the planet Arbre. Thousands of years prior to the events in the novel, society was on the verge of collapse. Intellectuals entered concents, much like monastic communities but without the religious elements. Here, the avout—a term for intellectuals living under vows and separated from saecular society [...]—retain only limited access to tools and technology and are watched over by officials answering to the outside world (known as the Sæcular Power).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anathem

Re: The Acceleration of Addictiveness

#33

Post by [deleted] »

bokonist wrote: post #5

I worry we may be heading for a future in which only a few people plot their own itinerary through no-land, while everyone else books a package tour. That's been the case for the majority of human history. It's mostly the case now. Most non-religious, progressive thinking people, don't actually think through most issues for themselves. They believe in institutions - academia, NPR, etc. Most people believe what they d…

[deleted]

Re: The Acceleration of Addictiveness

#34

Post by Tycho »

Internet addiction seems to be the elephant in the room of modern culture. Whole families are addicted, but it's not talked about. Not to mention the more, shall we say, illicit side of the 'net.

That said, TV and newspapers are arguably just as bad (or worse) and they've been around for ages. So that's... reassuring.

However I think the iPad an iPhone are good in the sense that they remove the social isolation involved with logging onto the net.

Re: The Acceleration of Addictiveness

#35

Post by johnrob »

It might be too broad to refer to the internet as a single entity. Those of us with internet addiction are actually addicted to specific things online - the internet is just the medium.

In the case of hacker news, what we're addicted to is startup news and gossip. It's ironic that this very morning I was thinking about how to produce some sort of audio version of HN for my daily commute.

Re: The Acceleration of Addictiveness

#36

Post by philwelch »

I actually want to get an iPad just to quarantine my internet addiction. If I treat my computer purely as a workspace I'll get more done while at my computer; if I've got an iPad for other things, I won't go through Hacker News withdrawals.

This was inspired by something PG said in another essay--that he deals with internet addiction by using separate computers for work and internet. The iPad is just a purpose built machine for that, in my view.

Re: The Acceleration of Addictiveness

#37

Post by natrius »

fmora wrote: post #28
Harj wrote: post #18

You can probably take it as a rule of thumb from now on that if people don't think you're weird, you're living badly. i've been surprised by just how true this statement is. i resolved to make some lifestyle changes this year to be healthier (without being overly zealous) and it's been amazing how reactions have made me feel like i'm behaving strangely. especially regarding alcohol at social events.

They probably think you are weird because consciously or sub-consciously you are acting smug.

Why do you think that explanation is particularly probable out of all of the other possibilities? It seems more likely that society would consider actions strange if the actions have justifications that most people don't understand or agree with, and they don't succeed in masking their judgement.

Re: The Acceleration of Addictiveness

#38

Post by wmf »

sendos wrote: post #31

One problem that people who work with computers for a living have versus people who don't, is that, if you are an internet addict and you are, e.g. a nurse, you can always just avoid computers altogether for, say a week or a month, if your addiction gets out of hand. But for people who work with a computer for their day job, avoiding the cause of the addiction is much tougher. It's like if a TV critic had a TV addict…

A while back PG said that he has a separate work computer that's not connected to the Internet. RMS goes even farther, only interacting with the Net via email.

Re: The Acceleration of Addictiveness

#39

Post by [deleted] »

bokonist wrote: post #5

I worry we may be heading for a future in which only a few people plot their own itinerary through no-land, while everyone else books a package tour. That's been the case for the majority of human history. It's mostly the case now. Most non-religious, progressive thinking people, don't actually think through most issues for themselves. They believe in institutions - academia, NPR, etc. Most people believe what they d…

[deleted]

Re: The Acceleration of Addictiveness

#40

Post by gigafemtonano »

I'm making an attempt at trying to establish myself online to catch the attention of VCs and angels now that I've moved to the bay area, but the result has been a constant urge to monitor everything. Buried within PG's essay is a hint that maybe he thinks it's not worth it in retrospect - zen painter or junkie hacker it seems.
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