I was going through my blog posts and checking them off against my Flickr
posts and holy “bleep”, I realised I forgot to blog a post. Major sin in
blogging, How could I miss that, why did I not see this before>
OK Ok, I am
only human but yikes…!!!! Ok I have calmed down a little now, but time to get
cracking and post this before I get literally shot. Joking :)
I wrote about a few blogs before that we seem to be creating a culture of
distraction. Just of late my nephew came over and stayed the night, (free food)
as he calls it, but all he wanted me to do was to walk with him on the mile
hike so he could catch some of the pokeman balls. Seriously? So off we went on
a huge walk, where he then said can we drive around a bit so I can get some
more lives? I honestly don’t know what he was saving, but an hr and a half
later, Yes I drove that far for him, he was pleased he had collected some saves and well for me I was down ½ a
tank of petrol. Yikes.
It seems we are creating and encouraging a culture of distraction where we are increasingly disconnected from the people and events around us and increasingly unable to engage in long-form thinking. Bear with me. People now feel anxious when their brains are unstimulated. Don’t get me wrong I love my nephew and it was sort of quality time but then again, we are losing some very important things by doing this. We threaten the key ingredients behind creativity and insight by filling up all our “gap” time with stimulation. We inhibit real human connection when we prioritize our phones over our the people right in front of us. What can we do about it? Is this path inevitable or can balance be restored? How can we not be so bored?
I want to ask people a simple question: are you happy with your
relationship with your phone. Do you think it’s a healthy one? I don’t think I
have a healthy relationship with mine. I feel a constant need to pull it out –
to check email, to text, to see if there is something interesting happening
RIGHT NOW. It’s constantly pulling on my attention. Do you do this? I do. If I
let it, it easily fills up those gaps in my day—some gaps of boredom, some of
solitude. Look at how internet access has changed since smart phones came into
being (and this data is a year old, so I’m certain it’s even more in this
direction). In the pre-smartphone era we accessed the internet roughly five
times per day, in longer chunks. Today, with smartphones, we’re accessing it like
30 times a day – aka Pokemon games. Before that was angry birds…
The effect of all of this is that we’re increasingly distracted. Less and
less able to pay attention to anything for what used to be reasonable length of
times. The funny part about distraction is that it’s a worsening condition. The
more distracted we are, the more likely we are to get distracted.
Some people call switching our attention between things that vie for it
“multi-tasking”. Like were a computer with dual cores running two simultaneous
processes. So why can’t we look away? Is there a comparison to slot machines? Is
the phone that addictive?.
Showcasing some gorgeous items available to you now, so what are you
waiting for, come take a walk to our destination for today: -
Phone: -[ kunst ] - kPhone 3 / metal
Hair: - Entwined Ariel
Deck Chair: - 22769 ~ [bauwerk] Balcony Deckchair (With Drape) Was at TLC now available instore
Trees: - LB_MysticBirch_Cluster{4Seasons} – Little Branch
