The easiest way to fight the urge to check your FB Twit etc, is to define that experience for what it is and not for what it is not. It IS a new experience for humanity to be tied into the rest of the world (or that portion that is digitalized, an important distinction) and we humans have yet to define what this means experientially. What we saw, unfortunately, in the mid-90s was the first TechBoom during which investment bankers (who for their whole existence have been stingy and skeptical about where they placed millions of their investment dollars) throw their millions into digital products, some of which had no physical presence or actual product. They were throwing money at an Idea, and not even a clearly defined one.

But our society, especially in the USA, had long been accustomed to thinking that Money equates Good, a delusion that is directly related to Pragmaticism, which is that particularly American philosophical system equating Effective with Good. Since Money is an effective tool, it indirectly becomes a Good value. (Broadstrokes, broadstrokes…) The point being that when the Money Bags throw obscene amounts of cash at Digital products, the message is clearly that Digital Products are Good.

But this is not in itself proven. It’s a byproduct of investors hoping to mine the digital future. For those involved, this meant a product needed to be created that would hook in consumer dollars. etc etc. The history of the App is easy enough to follow, but it’s not the point. The point is that much of what we get from our devices is useless, but lurking behind the use is the promise of more and that promise, that hope, that dream, is what hooks us into our devices. (We may even be picking up on the Hope of success that the Investors are praying for…)

This points us to the real issue, Analog existence. We must create hope in the real world, and then the hope generated from the device will not be as poignant. It’s harder and demands inner resources we don’t know how to access with ease, but it exists in there, otherwise it wouldn’t be pushing your face into your phone looking for itself.