Futurist RICHARD WATSON contemplates our entertainment saturated society where digital distraction is everywhere and doing nothing is increasingly feared.

About a year ago I was sitting in a focus group for a media company listening to a twenty-five year old complain about McDonald’s (I know, drinking diet Coke with the devil). Anyway, the young fella in question was talking about what happens when you place a fast food order: “You go in, order a Big Mac, fries and Coke and you wait and wait… and wait... sometime it takes almost a minute”.

This anecdote neatly sums up a social condition. In short (because I know you have no time to read this) we have become bored of waiting and we no longer wait to become bored.  We are developing attention spans that can be measured in seconds and everything from newspapers to sports are responding with shortened versions of everything from novels and new stories to cricket. Digital distraction is everywhere.

Indeed, as the writer Carolyn Johnson so succinctly puts it “Distraction isn’t merely available it’s unavoidable”. You can see this first hand when people rush to switch on their mobile phones the second a planes lands. This is why companies such as Motorola now use phrases like “microboredom” as an opportunity for product development. Or how about the way people now jump between songs on iPods, barely able to listen to a single song let alone an whole album. The result is a digital culture in which there is always something to do although, ironically, we never seem to be entirely satisfied.

We have become fearful about nothing – literally. The thought of leaving home without a mobile phone is frightening to a great many people. So is turning such devices off at night (many people don’t) or on holiday. Indeed, dropping out of this hyper-connected world for even a week seems like an act of eccentricity or even digital defiance. Why would you? How could you?

But what is this hyper-anxiety all about. What is so frightening about waiting or doing nothing? I think the reason is that we have become constantly anxious and this constant connectedness soothes our anxieties through the illusion of control. But what are we losing as a result? To be bored is a good thing. Rumination is the prelude to creation. Not only is doing nothing one of life’s few remaining luxuries it is also a state of mind that allows us to let go of the external world to explore what’s inside our own heads.

Reflection creates clarity and is a “prelude to engagement of the imagination” according to Dr Edward Hallowell, author of a book called Crazy Busy. It is a useful human emotion and one that has historically driven original thinking. It hurts at first but once you get through the mental anguish you can see things in their proper context and in a new light.

Technology, and mobile technology in particular, negates this. If you are trying to solve a problem whilst listening to Comfortably Numb by Pink Floyd on your iPod it is now all too easy to give up and move on. But if you persist you might just find that you get what you need. If you keep going beyond the boredom you will think of a new way of doing things. This is how most artists and writers think. Stick that thought in your iPod and set it to ‘random’.

Inspiration - The Joy of Boredom

Scientific American article on Boredom

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