When we try to hold the Internet in a single thought, we reach for an image of exhilaration, of liberation, of flight: "the Information Superhighway"; "surfing the Web"; data zipping through candy-colored cables straight into our homes. This is the Internet as it, in theory, ought to be: the world's information and entertainment instantly accessible, and we at our screens, poised, enthralled, and weightless. The image that comes to his mind is, one that comes closer to the Internet in practice: a great groaning table, creaking under bottomless platters of food and pitchers of drink, and we in our chairs, too exhausted to stand, mouths too numb to taste much, but with just enough energy to reach for more.
And there's the key to understanding the often anesthetic effect of the Internet. Decadence doesn't demand great wealth: Decadence is a useful way to understand any situation in which an existing pleasure becomes cheap, and it doesn’t take any ingenuity to fight off the boredom. That is now the case with information—the small burst of satisfaction that comes from a refilled inbox or a new text, from connecting with friends, or sharing the meme of the day. Millions of us are now richer in these pleasures than our parents' generation could ever imagine. But our capacity for enjoyment is still finite: We've built up a tolerance to the pleasures of information....
A recent college graduate likened life online to "being demoted from the category of thinking, caring human to a sort of rat that doesn't know why he needs to tap that button, just that he does to stop passively ingesting the flow”. It’s like trying to drink from a fire hose of information has harmful cognitive effects.- Rob Goodman
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