Let’s punt an idea around for a moment — purely brainstorming, an act of speculation. We’re going to start in the past, spring forward, and then look back again. First, a story:
Imagine a time traveler, plucked from our present time. He’s being whisked away from our hyper-connected, digital world and dropped into the early 1970s — a time devoid of the internet, smartphones, media reactions, and the buzz of arguments and memes. Less outrage and cynicism. The peak of large-scale popular movements, driven by grassroots groups organizing and focusing on clear goals. Within ten years, he’ll enter the 1980s, when pop culture gets its hands deeper into subculture and counterculture and commodifies life through media and commercial interests. Our traveler jumps back in time without any knowledge of sports game outcomes and only the most vague understanding of what happened four and a half decades ago.
How would our traveler react to this sudden absence of digital stimuli?
This thought experiment isn’t just a fun hypothetical; it offers a lens through which to examine the profound effects of the digital age on our cognitive functions and societal dynamics. There’s biology here, as well as a trove of sociological and psychological topics that can be used to speculate on the future.
Let’s delve into how such a drastic change might affect a person and explore the potential for a future where our focus might shift away from the digital chatter that envelopes contemporary life.
Adjusting to a Pre-Digital Reality
The initial shock of losing constant digital contact would be profoundly disorienting for our brave traveler. Accustomed to the instant gratification of information and communication, a modern individual would likely struggle, even if they previously lived in that era.
However, this scenario also offers a unique opportunity to observe the adaptability of the human mind. Where the human mind has increased in its capacity and function, being able to multi-task and find efficiencies in prioritization, it has also regressed and lost some of its ability to navigate slower, more deliberate forms of interaction and information processing. We can feel this. Some might describe it as a form of social ennui, while others attribute it to social anxieties, symptoms of depression, reasons for disassociation, or even mental wellness. No judgment intended, but there’s a common ground connecting a large portion of society — even if it’s an uncomfortable place to look at.
From the outside, our traveler might be viewed as distracted or neurotic — in the same way someone from the 1970s would seem odd in a pre-industrial era. And, we’re not even going to discuss clothing, hair, or slang here. Just consider the impact of social media on how often someone picks up their phone to get a small dopamine rush from scrolling nigh-meaningless content on a screen. If the momentary humor or learning on a touchscreen was replaced by the need to find and converse with someone, how would that compare to the present discomfort everyone is experiencing? What does the transition to breaking that habit look like? It might sound like a form of withdrawal, and there’s little doubt it would be unpleasant.
But this is just the start of the traveler’s adventure. Over time, as the traveler adapts and develops new habits, he would likely integrate the best of both worlds — combining rapid information processing with a renewed appreciation for in-person connections, thereby enriching their social interactions and emotional intelligence. Well done, traveler!
Let’s Go the Other Direction
In a future world, overwhelmed by digital stimuli, our traveler arrives in a world in which humanity has adapted to the constant and immediate access of digital life. Completely numb to the outrage and disinterested in media, random content, and biologically balanced to handle the availability of micro-dopamine infusions, our traveler struggles to shut out the world around himself.
He’s learned to take things slowly and has forgotten the digital trauma of his original time, but now he’s assaulted by the digital world and must close it off to survive. Eventually, realizing he needs to engage, he enters the world slowly and with deliberate limitations. Like learning a video game on the hardest difficulty, he gets better slowly and over time — until he becomes proficient with his interactions, just like those who’ve been raised in this future.
Those who meet our traveler, might see him as too sensitive and emotional at first. But, over time, they could grow to respect his ability to adapt, to learn, to catch up and specialize in the way the rest of the world has grown. And, here, we find a problem.
The Sociological Impact on Personal Psyche
The people of the future have endured generations of transient thoughts, engaged in and consumed libraries of superficial content, and been blind to the erosion of interactive wellness. Digital numbness as an idea has been supplanted by another 40 years of neo-digital growth beyond our present era, and generational identity exists — not in the movements of focused goals but in the confusion and exacerbation of social media and personified outreach. The future is hollow. An Easter egg in the garden, brightly dyed and beautiful but empty and without connection to its namesake.
How many will know that know the name, Ēostre? How many will abstain from eating eggs during lent and know that people used to have an abundance when they broke their fast? Will people still see springtime as the rebirth of nature?
Either the future will gel into a uniformity, the likes of which we haven’t seen, or the neo-digital future will seek to understand its heritage and culture. Take this in any direction and outcome you like, but there’s something else to consider. The human mind — both its biology and psyche, as well as the society around it, gained a higher form of multitasking. And, while there may be unforeseen limits to what the mind can do, we only use a fraction of our gray matter during our lives. What if those in a future society can separate the real world from the digital, but also those both from their identity?
Speculating on Future Cognitive Expansion
Looking forward, the integration of identity into our cognitive framework could redefine personal contributions to all levels of society. This shift would encourage a distraction and depreciation of digital efficiency, the likes of which we’ve only seen in the digital world’s impact of interpersonal communication. Equipped with the depth of digital knowledge and a disassociation with people around them, people might first struggle to adapt (as with our traveler in these new times) but would eventually assemble new identities — either through rediscovering their heritage and culture or by creating new identities from the real world and digital landscapes around them. We might see a reduction in the polarization and cultural misunderstandings that plague current discourse, if only as a result of the same cultural forces that pulled subculture and countercultures into popularity and commerce and divided the demographics of the large-scale cohesion of the movements that preceded them.
Let’s be kind and bring our traveler back to the present. As mentioned, this is purely a brainstorm. Please, have your own opinion on the idea — not so that you can make an argument or meme… but so you find an interesting conversation to wrap around it. Afterall, what good is a conversation if everyone already agrees?
