
Consumption Addiction - rythie
http://phuu.net/2012/03/28/consumption-addiction.html
======
drostie
Ah, the good old Wikipedia Effect. I think we could phrase it more precisely
like this: when following anything anecdote-like, your mind becomes unaware of
the causal process of following connections, and perhaps even unaware of the
time spent doing so (although that might be more of an effect of Flow[1]).

If anything, this article is too shallow: I have actually gone past the
consumption level and into a further abyss, at times. What I mean is, it's
possible to crave an even deeper high, and to receive one.

The "trick", if self-destructive behavior can be called that, is that your
brain has many different centers, like a language center and an audio center
-- some of which are mostly idling while you're consuming information. You can
use those zones to consume other information. So, like, I will sometimes play
FreeCell (or solve other logic puzzles) while watching a lecture sped up by
33% to eliminate the time wasted by the "ums". The only limitation is
eyestrain from staring at a screen too long and that feeling you get after
about half an hour of delicious "too-much-ness".

Not all of the mechanisms of addiction transfer. So, here is one of the
central mechanisms of addiction, the mechanism of escalation: an addict
consumes Z in order to feel better in some sense -- a rush or an altered
mental state -- but as time goes on, they build up a tolerance. They stop
consuming Z to feel better. They start consuming Z to feel _normal_ instead.
That particular situation doesn't happen nearly so much with information,
unless you count being nonplussed when you hear someone say something that
you've already thought about.

The central problem of addiction is also only incompletely transferred over. I
am not consuming information _in order to lose control_ , which is what seems
to shift e.g. alcohol-abuse into alcohol addiction. I was for a while addicted
to the game Morrowind because I would actually jump into it in order to waste
a day -- that was my goal, to lose control of myself. We need to make this
distinction early: there is _information abuse_ \-- getting so saturated with
information that you don't actually do anything with it -- and then there is
_information addiction_ , where the information itself wouldn't be interesting
to you, if you weren't going to get lost in it.

[1] What I mean is that _creation_ is not an antidote to losing-track-of-time,
and therefore that's not really central to the problem. It is easy to create
so much that one forgets to be productive: I will often lose track of the time
when I am helping people with mathematics and physics; or even just now, as I
am writing this on Hacker News. I could have been programming something useful
to my larger goals instead.

~~~
phuu
Thanks very much for the great comment.

I agree, I didn't go as far as I could have — but then the article is intended
as more of a warning than an in depth discussion of a struggle. Having said
that, I definitely saw in myself the symptoms of escalation.

My hope is that anyone in a similar situation recognises in it themselves and
makes a change, preventing anything worse, whatever that might be, from
occurring.

------
eriktrautman
Excessive information consumption has become an awful lot like watching TV.
Both disengage that part of the brain that actually has to work a little bit
to come up with new thoughts. Creativity is HARD. I find that it's especially
true when I'm skimming the mainstream tech/startup sites and reading over five
different posts titled "10 ways to..." or "10 things you need to know about
..." and then not remembering 2 minutes later what the heck I had read.

I used to fall asleep by watching cartoons to disengage my brain and I found
that it hurt my memory and awareness the next day. I found myself beginning to
do that with information consumption as well and had to do a gut check... I
was getting the cartoon effect by reading tons of meaningless posts until I
passed out. So are you reading because you're actually seeking particular
information or are you hibernating your brain while you let your eyes/mind
just wander?

------
Tzunamitom
\- If Everyone's Reading, Who's Left to Write?

Feast well on your Faustus,

Stuff your face with Springstein,

and hold down the Hirst

Gorge freely on Gormley,

Mange bien on your Monet,

and swallow your Stones

Dine liberally on your Dickens,

Munch on McEwan,

And lick your Lloyd-Webber

Get shitfaced on Spielberg

Drunk on Dean Martin

and bollocksed on Big Brother

Chew well your Cosmo,

Bite hard on the Bard

Consumption is easy,

Creation is hard

~~~
digitalsushi
If everybody's blogging, who's left to read?

The Internet is a billion rock stars on a billion stages. It used the audience
up, but we felt important.

~~~
danpat
There's money to be made building stages and doing backstage work :-)

------
wegwerf
Clay Johnson has a book and website, "The Information Diet: a case for
conscious consumption", on this topic:

<http://www.informationdiet.com/>

~~~
nboshart
I was going to suggest this, it's excellent and exactly what you're talking
about. He encourages creation as it gives you a focus and goal for consuming
online. Great stuff.

------
j_baker
Sometimes I think we have an addiction addiction. To me, it sounds like real
work is more boring than consuming information for the author. My solution?
Find less boring "real" work. I generally find that the amount of time I spend
on HN is proportional to how bored I am with my job. If the work really is
interesting, I find that I almost have to force myself to use HN just to take
a break.

------
yelongren
The problem of input (reading, listening, watching) without output (writing,
speaking, doing) is that, at the end of the day, you have nothing to show for
your time. And since none of us are telepaths, to the outside world, it is
like you haven't even existed that day.

------
jackularity
>On the surface, it feels great; learning, gaining knowledge and understanding
is fantastic [...] >but I need to be a creator, not a consumer

But _learning is also creative_. All knowledge must be conjectured afresh in
the mind that learns it -- the process is the same whether the knowledge is
known by others or not.

Knowledge gained from TV and browsing and consuming is of value in life,
including in creative projects.

If one is feeling addicted or jaded or whatever then what this really means is
that browsing has been used to _distract_ one from other, more pressing,
problems, e.g. personal problems

There's no reason not to do both, in whatever ratio seems fit. Cutting oneself
off from the culture would be detrimental to one's original work.

------
ClintonWu
Great post on something that affects me. Partially why I'm creating Skim.Me
(<http://skim.me>). You tell us how much time you have and we curate your
routine in one feed. All the content in one ecosystem. Not just news and
social but all applicable verticals in the future. For those that are ok
giving up their browsing history for us to analyze. Probably not everyone.

------
funkah
I guess I don't agree with our current reverence for creation. It's easy to
create things and shove them out into the world. The work that comes after,
though, is unsexy, unglamorous, and usually less fun than the creation part.
It's also where most of the value comes from.

