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Douglas Rushkoff

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“Meanwhile, the net celebrates kids whose antics are the most sensationalist and, as a result, often reckless and self-destructive. An entire genre of YouTube video known as Epic Fail features amateur footage of wipeouts and other, well, epic failures. "FAIL Blog," part of The Daily What media empire, solicits fail videos from users and features both extreme sports stunts gone awry along with more random humiliations—like the guy who tried to shoplift an electric guitar by shoving it down his pants. Extreme sports clips are competing on the same sensationalist scale and result in popular classics such as "tire off the roof nut shot" and "insane bike crash into sign." Daring quickly overtakes what used to be skill. In "planking" photos and videos, participants seek to stay frozen in a horizontal plank position as they balance on a flagpole, over a cliff, or on top of a sleeping tiger. For "choking" videos, young people strangle one another to the point of collapse and, sometimes, death.”

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Book:Present Shock: When Everything Happens Now
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“Previously, leaving the couch and walking up to the television to change the channel might cost more effort than merely enduring the awful advertisement and associated anxiety. But with a remote in hand, the viewer can click a button and move away effortlessly. Add cable television and the ability to change channels without returning the set (not to mention hundreds of channels to watch instead of just three), and the audience's orientation to the program has utterly changed. The child armed with the remote control is no longer watching a television program, but watching television—moving away from anxiety states and into more pleasurable ones. Take note of yourself as you operate a remote control. You don't click the channel button because you are bored, but because you are mad: Someone you don't trust is attempting to make you anxious. You understand that it is an advertiser trying to make you feel bad about your hair (or lack of it), your relationship, or your current SSRI medication, and you click away in anger. Or you simply refuse to be dragged still further into a comedy or drama when the protagonist makes just too many poor decisions. Your tolerance for his complications goes down as your ability to escape becomes increasingly easy. And so today's television viewer moves from show to show, capturing important moments on the fly. Surf away from the science fiction show's long commercial break to catch the end of a basketball game's second quarter, make it over to the first important murder on the cop show, and then back to the science fiction show before the aliens show up.”

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Book:Present Shock: When Everything Happens Now
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“Meanwhile, the extraordinary measures we take to stay abreast of each minuscule change to the data stream end up magnifying the relative importance of these blips to the real scheme of things. Investors trade, politicians respond, and friends judge based on the micromovements of virtual needles. By dividing our attention between our digital extensions, we sacrifice our connection to the truer present in which we are living. The tension between the faux present of digital bombardment and the true now of a coherently living human generated the second kind of present shock, what we're calling digiphrenia—digi for "digital," and phrenia for "disordered condition of mental activity.”

AttentionInternetDigitalDistractionPresentPresent ShockDigiphrenia
Book:Present Shock: When Everything Happens Now
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