Out of Egypt:

from my worries about Internet addiction

This evening I was worried about my frequent gravitation toward the Internet in free time, especially now that I have wireless. So I tried taking the Internet Addiction Test, which seemed fairly legit, and it said that my answers were within the normal range.

Then I learned that the IAT was apparently developed from the criteria for pathological gambling, a very different problem, and this made sense after I looked at the test more closely.

Perhaps, as the following quote suggests, the Internet isn't the problem at all:

"Since the aspects of the Internet where people are spending the greatest amount of time online have to do with social interactions, it would appear that socialization is what makes the Internet so 'addicting.' That's right -- plain old hanging out with other people and talking with them. Whether it's via e-mail, a discussion forum, chat, or a game online (such as a MUD), people are spending this time exchanging information, support, and chit-chat with other people like themselves."

- Dr. John Grohol, "Internet Addiction Guide"

And so, the question then becomes, "Is there anything unique about the modality of the Internet vs. other communications media?" Is it uniquely compelling or absorbing, to the extent that it causes people to become alienated from reality?

I am not sure. I know that the user interface metaphors that have been developed over the past 20 years, not to mention the nature of hypertext itself, cause computer-mediated communication to have a different phenomenological quality than, say, reading a book.

I like to describe hypertext as the "master medium" of our time. By this phrase I mean that hypertext is an unprecedented delivery mechanism for other media - text via Wikipedia, images via Flickr, audio via iTunes and last.fm, video via YouTube, socialization (concretized speech) via Facebook, Myspace, and the like. Electronic communication is becoming like a nervous system for the planet, as McLuhan suggested way back in the 1960s - one twitch, and everyone jumps.

This, of course, is what my SIP (senior undergrad thesis) was all about. These are issues I'm still working through, as is our society as a whole. We live in an age of great disruption, for good and for ill.

McLuhan said, "There is no inevitability as long as there is a willingness to recognize what is happening." I'm not so sure.

As far as I know, no new communications technology has ever been successfully resisted. The trend in society has always been toward more complexity, more dependence on technology - as long as war and disaster has not intervened.

So, again, I am left to ponder - what do we gain and what do we lose?