Search Results for: dopamine

Dopamine addiction: The haikus

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Enough with the novels, already. Time to spin some haikus, eh?

I admit it: the internet is eating my mind. And here are some related haikus, straight from the poet, by God.

Self-portrait: Tenuously me

Spring day darkening:

the locust digital swarm

eats my absent mind.

Read on for the essential lowdown on dopamine addiction.

Dipping for Dopamine

Delivery vehicles,

Every damn Like

A dopamine fix. 

Proto-cyborg Lament

The battery defunct,

My 5G iPhone is dead.

I am diminished. 

Oxymoron… Read more

Writerly occupational hazard: Mental DDOSs

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DDOS: Distributed denial of service. Shutting down an internet server by launching an attack from a number of sources to overwhelm the targeted system with data.

Exposure to the internet amounts to an effective DDOS on your brain.

There’s too much information out there, and the filters — both in terms of search engine devices and user self-discipline — just aren’t up to the task. It appears we humans are hardwired to be seduced by all the supposed opportunities for … Read more

Smartphone appendages: A typology

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Not smartphone apps as in ‘applications’ — we’re talking apps as in ‘appendages.’ I.e. you and me.  (Have a look at this earlier story for more on Homo app.)

I’ve just come across three-year-old story notes on a remote corner of my hard drive. I have a character on the skytrain considering the  merely absent presence of the other passengers. One advantage of living in Bangkok, he has always believed, are the rich opportunities for people-watching. But it has … Read more

Interpermeable realities, material and digital

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Do you ever try to conduct word searches while reading a print book? What an odd sensation. Just for a moment, you mentally reach for a control that isn’t there. Then you realize this is a paper book, and if you want to find that word or passage you have to use the index, if there is one, or else estimate where in all those pages it’s most likely to appear, and then skim the actual material book manually. What … Read more

Zombie nation: Shutting down

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In my previous post I suggested that persons and cultures, our very realities, are narrative in structure. What happens when you interrupt such narratives? Many of us are finding out, thanks to our increasingly ubiquitous and much-beloved digital communication technologies. There follow two especially obvious ways this is happening.

Applying a cell phone to the side of one’s head in public has the effect of disconnecting the brain. In this condition, cellphone users show characteristic signs of aimlessness, milling about … Read more

New you’s: Modular commodification

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I am Nikon. I am my iPhone. I am a chimera, a mongrel composite of my Levis, my Dockers, my Tilly hat, my Bush Country SUV.

I am whoever I choose to be. I am whatever. I am a staunch iconic mashup doing my part to keep the wheels of industry turning. I am my modular personality du jour compliments of the advertising industry and my own f***wittedness. Cool.

 

But it gets weirder than that. And maybe more … Read more

English language needs *iktsuarpok*

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Iktsuarpok: an Inuit word more useful to us citizens of the digital universe than umpteen expressions for varieties of snow.

Here’s how the blogsite Mental Floss characterizes the expression:

“You know that feeling of anticipation when you’re waiting for someone to show up at your house and you keep going outside to see if they’re there yet? This is the word for it.”

And it occurs to me that iktsuarpok might enrich modern English, where it could just as

… Read more

Writerly occupational hazard: New frontiers in creative foreplay

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In the old days, writers sharpened pencils, checked the mail, experimented with melismatic renditions of “I’m a Lumberjack, and I’m Okay,”  polished the piano (the rich writers, I mean) and so on. Classic avoidance behavior, right? Anything’s better than actually getting down to the hard business of writing.

Maybe not. Or at least maybe not entirely. I’m not the first to suggest that all the screwing around may well be a vital part of the creative process. … Read more

Writerly occupational hazards: Addictions, spinal deficiencies, and disciplinary infinite regresses

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One writer, however much tongue in cheek, has actually expressed admiration for addicts:

I admire addicts. In a world where everybody is waiting for some blind, random disaster, or some sudden disease, the addict has the comfort of knowing what will most likely wait for him down the road. He’s taken some control over his ultimate fate, and his addiction keeps the cause of death from being a total surprise.     ~ Chuck Palahniuk

Overall, though, even Palahniuk would probably concede … Read more