Your attention, please.

Say goodbye to your alone time. [source]

I recently finished House of Leaves, a 700+ page monstrosity of a book, with pages that often look something like this. It's full of footnotes that trail endlessly into one another and multiple plot lines arranged in different columns on the same page. As I was jumping between pages in a frenzy, trying to follow the labyrinthine plot, I realized: this isn't so bad. In fact, I'm used to it. Books like this emphasize the backward pollination of the internet into earlier forms of media. Not coincidentally, the book is kind of meant to drive you insane, and it does that pretty well. Like the footnotes in the book, internet hyperlinks don't just give us an option to switch contexts. As Nicholas Carr says, they "propel" us; they give our reading momentum. I can relate to Carr's remarks about losing the ability to focus on content with depth, not breadth. Banner ads and other flashy content make it tough to focus as well, and with a bookmarks bar at the top of my browser with all of my favorite sites, I often find myself unconsciously opening new links when I should be studying what's on the page. And thank goodness I never got hooked on StumbleUpon. Sites like Wikipedia give us a rabbit hole of information that we can easily spend hours on, learning about things that have almost no relation to the ones we started off reading about. Like Carr, I'm now having a harder time focusing on books than I did in the past. With practice, I can overcome it, but it's definitely frustrating.

Even so, I don't agree with Carr's fear that Google will become too powerful of an AI, systematizing everything and removing mystery from the world. In any case, it wouldn't be Google's fault; it would be ours. Google is a tool like any other, and it's our job to use it judiciously. Technology hasn't robbed us of moderation and discipline, now has it? I recently went for almost a week without internet access, and apart from being unable to check my email, I found I wasn't missing much at all. When I got it back, I checked a few sites and said, "That's it? That's all I was missing?" As Howard Rheingold mentions, though, some people are growing up without being taught how to detach from their technology. I didn't have the internet until I was at least 12 years old; what'll it be like for kids who grow up with it in their earliest conscious memories? I don't think Ludditism (rejection of modern technology) is the answer. We should instead focus on teaching kids how to sit down and read a book in one sitting, or finish a painting before getting back on the internet. Google won't be able to do either of those things for us in the near future, and they're still immensely satisfying even if it could. We're going to need people for a very long time.

Still, I'm afraid. The internet may be killing the introvert. Many deep thinking activities require isolation. While I certainly enjoy socializing, I also put a lot of worth on having time to myself to focus on my personal projects (or just to think). In that sense, I'm a bit of an introvert; I often need to recharge my social "batteries." I'm finding it hard to do that these days. My phone is almost always on me, even when I'm alone, meaning I'm usually juggling several conversations at once via text message. Even the most hardcore of introverts - you know the stereotypes - aren't really alone anymore. They may be locked up in their room for weeks, but they're on Facebook, or playing online games like World of Warcraft that are based on community interaction. I often want to cut off communication for awhile and simply have my own time, but I worry that I'll miss something. Will my friends be insulted if I don't text them back for awhile? What if there's an emergency? In recent years, I've taken to staying up late at night. Because most people are sleeping, I find this is one of the only times I can get things done without the hindrance of social responsibilities. Since being almost nocturnal has taken a toll on my health, I'd like to find a better solution. I think that many other people my age are developing a growing discontent with our constant connectedness, too, despite the many advantages it's given us. As Bill Hicks once joked in the 80's, try watching CNN for 24 hours. You'll go insane. Several of my friends have expressed a wish to go off the grid entirely and renounce these modern trappings in all their constancy. That's a little extreme for me, but I understand where they're coming from. I suspect we'll see a strong increase in the number of these young technological outcasts very soon.

Being a programmer by trade, it's a confusing fence for me to sit on. Despite my disdain for certain aspects of our technology, though, I'm excited about the future of artificial intelligence. Something like a self-driving car could free up time for more mindful activities. By offloading tasks to computers, we can spend more time studying the finer things. In any case, the horizon may come sooner than we think. Futurist Ray Kurzweil thinks we'll have an AI that can pass for human by 2029 (in fact, he's betting $20,000 on it). The concepts of trans-humanism can get a bit extreme, but I'm excited by the possibility of augmenting our bodies and intelligence with new technology. Regardless of how thrilling the future may turn out to be, we should remember to apply forethought and to be disciplined in its use, and embrace that little cultural undercurrent that tells us to hesitate.