15 + 20 points
What Is The Internet? by Jane McGonigal
January 16th, 2007 11:36 AM
The Internet is dopamine generator. It is an engine for producing an eternal cycle of electronic hope and despair. Email dings and new message alerts raise hope. We feel optimistic in the blank moment of refreshing a page. Our brain produced dopamine on the occasions we get what we want, and we connect, connect, connect hoping for that next dopamine hit. But unsatisfying or missing correspondence brings despair; we do not find what we are looking for when the data load. So we refresh again, we click "check messages" again, we post into the void... hoping to produce that moment of satifying connectivity. Dope me, Internet!!
I was just having this exact conversation with friends Friday night. Medical studies might disagree about the long-term neurological effects of using drugs like E or pot regularly, but the concern is less physiological than it is psychological: clearly, spending so much time in an altered state changes the way you receive the world.
The internet, the multi-tasking office job, email refresh... altered states. Addicting and likely destructive.
"The piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age."
--HP Lovecraft