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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
>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.
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.
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.
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.