Background
This article in many ways is a followup, to this article: Memes and the Need to Go Faster, it’s not required reading, but states some of the variables in the current culture war.
The article follows along this question:
Fragmentation of Capacity
It is with no uncertain certainty that the World’s capacity for attention is diminished. We may bemoan the fact we are losing the ability to read, focus and that our attention is fragmented.
Yet humans will continue to use the Devil’s tools, as it gives them a perceptual edge. While we certainly can blame the myriad of psychologists, social engineers and data scientists for hijacking our biological wiring. Yet in many ways, we also want to use those tools.
Social media gives the individual at minimum the perception of an informational edge. This is important as the faster one believes they can update their sense-making capacity they can prepare for the new situation. Either by exploiting it or by preparing for it.
The military and political realms are the two best examples of this. However, the average citizen is now playing a very similar game. Culture, trends, media etc. Ideas can be adjusted immediately, specifically in-group out-group, status signalling and information. The attention economy has harnessed this idea of perceptual edge with novelty, drama, mystery and outrage.
The adaption of long concentration is many ways is becoming more of a hindrance in this new environment. The ability to concentrate requires singularity of focus and a focus on things that often do not have much change. When things at minimum appear to be shifting rapidly, there is nothing that appears to be a constant; unless you have a high level of perception.
The thing today may be gone tomorrow, if so why invest in it? Be it skills, books, languages, relationships etc. Ideas like “adapt or die” or “fail fast” suggest that investment in something should be lessened. Not to be attached and so forth.
Without a constant the brain shifts into a mode of threat analysis. It must accurately gauge every situation. The mechanism for longer concentration lies dormant until the threat passes.
This likely leads to a shift in the usage of functional short-term memory, rather than long-term memory. People complaining about not remembering is possibly a neurological symptom of lack of connectivity between short term and long-term memory. One which will likely be confirmed by scientists in future years.
A Culture Run by the Clock
In an age where the majority of the “West” runs by the clock, the toll of the bell, it seems natural to want to maximize time. This leads to shortcuts. Summaries, recaps, highlights, top tens, Best of’s are a staple in today’s culture. All in an effort to maximize time efficiency.
Forget the grand sprawling epics when the summary will give you the information in one one-hundredth of the time. Even better if you can understand the summary in audio/audio-visual format at 2x speeds. This culture is about the destination, not the journey.
Extracting what is or is perceived to be the benefits at the highest rate of speed possible. Thus the speed of culture will continue to grow as it becomes a race to achieve information not only at a more timely rate, (speed) but also to understand and apply it (velocity).
In short, we are trying to optimize the sense-making capacities. The ability to orient one’s self and understand their position in the landscape was previously paramount for survival. While we may not fear for our lives as much our position in the social hierarchy is one of importance.
Culture has optimized in many ways for speed rather than velocity. For if it opted for velocity; Culture would find an optimal point for understanding and application rather than orientation. We have rather exchanged velocity for speed. Either we slow down to accommodate for our current understanding or increase the capacity for understanding and application such that the tools are updated for the modern era.
A Difference in Amount is A Difference in Kind
To illustrate let us look for a second at the humble penny. The smallest denomination in most currencies, perhaps not even legal tender in your country. If I gave you a penny you wouldn’t care, two wouldn’t change your mind. In fact, it may be worthless. However, at some point, the amount would be greater than the hassle and you would accept. Be it ten dollars, a hundred or more.
This tangent is not to remind you of your thoughts on pennies, but rather to illustrate at some point even the humble penny, nothing, in fact, becomes something. The constant bombardment of advertisements, screens and neon take their toll. Even when you are in control of the amount of television, podcasts, music, youtube, articles, social media etc. is staggering.
At some indiscernible point, we all crossed that line between this is nothing and easily controllable to the vast drowning mass that is the attention economy. The limited bandwidth became inundated with too much.
The Fragmented Future and the Attention Economy.
Currently, it seems there is no stopping this behemoth of fragmentation. While the revolt against it has become more prominent inertia will likely win the day. A small perceptive few will likely be the ones to try and halt its effects. At minimum preventing any further erosion of the mind.
We will inevitably reach a singularity of both speed and sense-making. In which neither speed of information nor cognitive processing ability can be further extrapolated. We reach in many ways a stillness at this eye of the storm. Either we reevaluate the conditions that lead to this situation or we continue to play the ever-escalating game once more, by removing humans from the picture with Artificial Intelligence.
The velocity of knowledge is the understanding and application of such if readjusted for, either requires a slow down the current system or would require some augmentation of humans. Doing so would manifest itself as changes to the education system, media consumption, blackout periods and so forth.
Cultural changes would be inevitable for changing cultural optimization from speed to velocity.
Otherwise, we begin to play games of brinksmanship with things that are beyond the human capacity for control.
Coda
Whether there is irrefutable damage remains to be seen. Even if there is permanent damage I suspect the medical industry with genetic engineering, stem cells and CRISPR will cook up something. The consequences of that will be another issue.
It appears we are at a crossroads. A larger and larger majority is voicing their opinions and concerns about not only the speed of culture but also the amount of data produced. Some will likely try to personally move towards velocity from speed. Although the attention economy’s incentives are misaligned, built on ever-increasing speed and absorption of your time. Without a conscious effort on their part, the population will continue to follow the ever increasing speed of culture until it breaks.
