Addiction to Infinite Present is Spreading

Unconsciously, we all — including you, dear reader — are becoming wedged in the here and now — an “infinite present.” It is a lived form of cognitive malpractice akin to bloodletting that we are voluntarily inflicting on ourselves. An addiction that drains away the time we need to understand the past, explore future options, and make sense of our lives and world.

A colloquial, shorthand version of this as social angst is called FOMO — fear of missing out. But our infinite present addiction is bigger than simple social angst because it is infecting every area of life. A subtle, dangerous obsessive compulsive drive to keep up with the accelerating now that is spreading surprising fast.

At this point, you might well be rolling your eyes and thinking — WTF, this is exaggerated nonsense. I wish that was so. It is not.

Personally, I struggle with my addiction every day. But, for both personal and professional reasons, I cannot completely kick the habit.

That said, I am probably one of the lucky ones. Fortunately, I had a past before this epidemic started to spread. That past, more than anything, is probably what enables me to managing my addiction and keep in check— at least marginally.

Nonetheless, like you, my mind-space is biologically limited. There is only so much information I can absorb and process within any given amount of time. It is the conscious awareness of this fact that makes my time exceeding valuable to me. Consequently, where my attention gets directed is critical.

Seeds of destruction

Prior to today’s internet, the closest anyone ever came to experiencing an infinite present was when there were only three TV news networks. But even that only consumed an hour a day. Thus, it still left plenty of time to explore the past and mentally run endless scenarios to make sense of the world.

While it may seem odd, the seeds of today’s addiction are related to early computer “viruses.” Generally, the intent is to produce some widespread contemporaneous effect, usually for nefarious ends. Defending against these threats morphed into gigantic global arms-race among specialists.

Computer viruses were followed by the spread of less malicious, but by no means benign, “spam.” Randomly thrown over the email transom, the intent is to ensnare careless minds and get them to consume something undesirable, often toxic. Generally, tech giants and specialized companies help defend against this junk.

The arrival of You-Tube put the idea of “viral” content into play. Whatever the subject matter, “going viral” means the particular content has spread like a virus through a large segment of the populace.

Importantly, the key characteristic of this type of virality— like our addiction to the infinite present — is that people voluntarily “infect” themselves. Therefore, no one thinks to defend against any potential negative consequences.

Addiction

Most things in life that bring us pleasure — both good and bad — have an addictive quality. But the key to coping with any addiction is the extent to which we are consciously aware of it. Once we are aware our ability to control or manage it, rather than it controlling us, increases.

This brings me back to the infinite present and my addiction.

I got hooked on the Internet in the 70s at an early age. While I always knew I was addicted, for a long time it was a sufficiently peripheral adjunct to my life that I could control it. To a large extent, however, this was due more to the slow emergence of rich, robust quality content.

In retrospect, the slow emergence of quality content was a stroke of luck. Luck because it enabled me to have total control over my time and cognitive surplus to direct my attention in any direction my curiosity took me.

Thus, I had all the time and discretion I wanted to mine the past, assess the present, and explore the future with imaginative scenarios. Moreover, ultimately, it gave me the time needed to connect the dots and see the entire magnificent evolutionary arc of it all in great detail (as here).

Chasing that first “high”

Things started changing around the turn of the millennium as bloggers joined other online publications to feed us ever more content. Shortly thereafter news aggregators, social media, and twitter were added to the mix. Thus, in a surprisingly brief period, the limited quantity of content became a 24/7 tsunami.

While always a serious consumer of contemporary news, with the financial crash I felt compelled to start weekly e-newsletter. The intent, which continues, was to discover, aggregate and curate what seemed to me to be “real news.”

For me, real news excludes all natural and man-made calamities, political vicissitudes, shiny new toys, sports and entertainment, personalities and gossip. To be sure, I have my biases, but the focus has always been solely on the odd bits of information signaling some consequential change, innovation, emerging trend, event or unique interpretation of our milieu.

But all that is secondary to what happened to me in the process. And, inasmuch as you are reading me here and now, I suspect has also happened to you.

I became an infinite present addict. Like most addicts, this means constantly chasing that first “high,” thinking the next “hit” will bring back that initial euphoria. Of course, it never does.

Tie me up, tie me down

The entirety of my life and career has been dedicated to comprehending where we, as a species, society and civilization are at in space and time, what it means, where we are headed and what options are open to us.

This was a pure intellectual pleasure until the consequences of an infinite present sunk in. When it did I became distressed on many levels.

On a personal level, from the moment I get up in the morning the infinite present addiction demands a fix. To ease in I check my email and messages. This leads to the consumption of content from online news aggregators and major papers, followed by the perusal of numerous specialize technology, economic, scientific and legal journals, magazines, blogs and Medium. Of course, as I traverse all of this I am repeatedly diving down into various specific articles to add depth to the basic breadth of content consider to be “real news.”

Note that while this takes hours, it does not include any social media — no Facebook, Linked-In, Twitter — or alert and notification services. Throw in a little writing, as here, just enough exercise to preclude premature death, a small gastronomic reward, the occasional liaison, and there is exceedingly little time or cognitive surplus left to intellectually play with any novel ideas.

Daily everything is in the shadow of the infinite present, which is always present demanding yet another fix. Suffice it to say, doing this day-in and day-out is exhausting. Clay Shirky’s expected cognitive surplus is, effectively, missing in action.

On a more mainstream level, for most people — especially these days with smartphones — the real-time pursuit and digestion of emails and messages, social media, online news, sports and entertainment content invariably has to consume as much time and mind-space as my addiction.

But, it is on the societal level that this addiction is truly disturbing and depressing. That is because virtually all the time and effort spent online consuming content is almost exclusively dedicated to the infinite present — today’s reality. There is no longer any consequential consideration of context, change or direction. Collectively, we are losing sight of the forest for the trees.

Buddy, can you spare a dime?

In 1961, the FCC chairman called television “a vast wasteland.” While the Internet contains copious amounts of quality content, to make money or have followers, everyone needs “sticky eyeballs,” like yours here — now.

Consequently, while we have this truly vast cyberspace archive and an extraordinary portal to our future, the overwhelming majority of content providers are fighting to provide us with more of the infinite present. Twitter, as with crazy Donald, is exhibit A.

So, having the time and energy to find quality content amidst the cacophonous deluge of the infinite present content has gone beyond being simply a challenge. Increasingly it is a luxury or a regrettable urgent necessity.

More to the point, for the average person, the sheer quantity of political, sports, entertainment, news and family and friend content means most people are blissfully satisfied living totally in an infinite present. Thus, beyond fictional movie versions of history or the future, most are increasingly bereft of a tangible awareness or consideration of what has or might happen.

More important, since the infinite present is just that, infinite, every day delivers yet another “fix.” Yesterday’s “present” becomes a foggy recollection, and anything beyond that results in amnesia. Doubt this? Just listen to or read what any politician or news commentator has to say these days.

The black-hole’s event horizon

The really crazy part of our addiction to an infinite present is how unaware we are that we are the source of this epidemic. Further, that unlike computer virus and spam problems, there is no industry providing a defense against this viral affliction. (Full disclosure, this is what my company seeks to provide.)

So, it really does not take much effort to see the counterproductive consequences of our addiction to an infinite present are visible everywhere. For example:

• The Arab Spring and Occupy Wall St. movements, where lots of people spontaneously mobilized themselves for change, yet only belatedly discovered they had no clue as to what they needed as a next step to succeed.
• The U.S. political system, where the safest career move is parroting focus group tested partisan talking points, yet provide us with nothing beyond the blaming of others for the absence of substantive action.
• The financial crash, where everyone knows the financial industry screwed us and politicians saved them, yet we were left to pay the bill and powerless to respond in any meaningful way.

Again, individually and collectively, we only have so much mind-space and time in a day. Whatever the issue, the infinite present crowds out everything else. There is no tomorrow.

And, even if you have faint residual neuronal memory traces of yesterday, in an infinite present nobody is really willing or able to think or do anything about it. Everyone is too overwhelmed just attending to the now.

As I said, I am lucky. Having had the opportunity to develop a sense of the evolutionary arc of past, present and future options, I have been able to vaccinate myself sufficiently to manage my addiction.

Thus, I am able to pause, as here, and collect my thoughts beyond the infinite present. Unfortunately, what I see when sober and audit it all, is not pretty.

My next post, Infinite Present — Our Digital Dark Age, puts this addiction of an infinite present into a larger context and suggest how we could and should manage it.

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You can find more of my ideas at my Medium publication, A Passion to Evolve or my website dochuston1. com

In any case, may you live long and prosper.