No one moved my cheese

I always knew that there had to be a method to this madness – this constant googling, twittering, gmailing, orkutting, facebooking.

I mean, lets face it, there has to be a scientific explanation for the entire human race to have been transformed into one heaving mass of confused, dissatisfied souls perma hooked to their computers.

I found this terrific article that answered all the questions (http://www.slate.com/id/22249
32) and raised several others. I have quoted some lines from this article - some lines that hit home ! And how !

“Seeking. You can't stop doing it. Sometimes it feels as if the basic drives for food, sex, and sleep have been overridden by a new need for endless nuggets of electronic information.”

Exactly, We seek. We seek who has trusted whom… and why ? We seek who has sent which mail. We seek the answers to a million random questions that arise in our minds on one single topic. We seek who has written what in their diary. We seek who has given which gift to whom, with what message ? We seek who is online, who is ready to chat, we keep asking ‘whats up’ to strangers when we could not care less what actually was going on in their lives.

We are so insatiably curious that we gather data even if it gets us in trouble.

Yes, curiosity killed the cat. And MSians, tweeters, gmailers and facebookers are ALL in trouble – only they don’t seem to realize it.

We search for information we don't even care about. We reach the point that we wonder about our sanity.

Sometimes we do wonder about sanity. Sometimes we are too far gone to even wonder. Now don’t ask me where I happen to figure.

We actually resemble nothing so much as those legendary lab rats that endlessly pressed a lever to give themselves a little electrical jolt to the brain. While we tap, tap away at our search engines, it appears we are stimulating the same system in our brains that scientists accidentally discovered more than 50 years ago when probing rat skulls.

No wonder I have started loving cheese lately. And since my desktop stays where it was, its that perma heavenly phase when no one moved my cheese and no one will ever move my cheese – all I will do is keep eating my cheese till I get sick.

Constant Internet scrolling is remodeling our brains to make it nearly impossible for us to give sustained attention to a long piece of writing. Like the lab rats, we keep hitting "enter" to get our next fix.

Pizza with a double cheese topping coming up ! Hold the mustard and the rye ! Bring on the pepperoni !

Since we're restless, easily bored creatures, our gadgets give us in abundance qualities the seeking/wanting system finds particularly exciting. Novelty is one.”

Novelty is only one, mind you. There are several others, which I am afraid to find out – since I don’t wanna know all the dark lacunae that exist in my psyche.

The system is also activated by particular types of cues that a reward is coming. The "ding" announcing a new e-mail or the vibration that signals the arrival of a text message serves as a reward cue for us. And when we respond, we get a little piece of news making us want more. These information nuggets may be as uniquely potent for humans as a Froot Loop to a rat. When you give a rat a minuscule dose of sugar, it engenders "a panting appetite," a powerful and not necessarily pleasant state.

OK, so I know what I am when I sit at the desktop seeking information – a panting rat seeking rewards ! No wonder I am out of breath. Let me get myself an oxygen mask, will be back soon.