There's a psychological burden of digital life even heavier than distraction

Digital Echoes and Unquiet Minds There’s a psychological burden of digital life even heavier than distraction. When the iPhone was first introduced in 2007, the notion of an “everything device” was universally celebrated. A single object that could serve as phone, camera, music player, web browser, and so much more promised unprecedented convenience and connectivity. It was, quite literally, the dream of the nineties. But the better part of twenty years later, we’ve gained enough perspective to recognize that this revolutionary vision came with costs we did not anticipate. Distraction, of course, is the one we can all relate to first. An everything device has the problem of being useful nearly all the time, and when in use, all consuming. When you use it to do one thing, it pushes you toward others. In order to avoid this, you must disable functions. That’s an interesting turn of events, isn’t it? We have made a thing that does more than we need, more often than we desire. Because s ... Read full article.