The Over-Stimulated Society.

Perhaps we are in a transition period with the internet and this tech will fade into our backgrounds, but I doubt it.  The oft used promise of technology is that it will free us from manual and repetitive tasks and help us with tedious organization so that we will be free to do other things and be more productive. The PC (and later the tablet) was supposed to eliminate paperwork, not increase it. But in truth the “paperwork” has expanded since it's easier to store and retrieve data digitally, so it’s not less paperwork it’s a lot more data entry. Today millions of people spend the bulk of their work lives feeding databases - entering health, insurance, regulatory, financial, travel, and leisure data into machines. Nursing and medical care have increasing become data entry jobs more than direct care jobs. In the medical world if it's not documented in an electronic medical record it didn't happen, and if insurance won’t pay for it won’t happen. I've witnessed this first-hand working in nursing homes.  More time is spent clicking on patient records on a tablet than in talking to patients. Technology is causing a huge decline in job satisfaction for many 21st century workers. Our tech is isolating us and over-stimulating our brains, and the trend is not likely to reverse.

The over-stimulation effect spills out into the streets and into our leisure time. My wife was recently approached by a sales person that puts audio speakers into a public parks that play music – but also play ads, making the park space into a revenue stream.  This kind of thinking is happening everywhere and is enabled by tech and ubiquitous internet access.  Just because you can certainly doesn’t mean you should.

It is very difficult (I know because I try) to find a restaurant meal where the house Muzak isn’t constantly intruding on your conversation.  So very much of “background” music is unnecessary stimulation.  It’s often too loud, too repetitive (odd that much of it is 70’s music) and adds nothing to the experience.  I think Muzak is used for maybe three reasons:  it’s expected, its presence lowers anxiety for many people on some level, and it gets people to eat and leave more quickly to turn over tables.  It’s rarely to increase the actual enjoyment of a meal.  It’s become noise, and we cannot get away from it.

Another common tech intrusion are ubiquitous TV screens. They are everywhere. In the case of restaurants again, they are intrusive, distracting and detract from person to person interaction. Watch carefully in your next time eating out; count the screens and then see how many people are watching them.  In one restaurant, I counted 21 TV screens in my field of vision, all without turning my head; there were many more behind me.  The problem is you can’t turn them off if you want to.  Most people aren’t watching them because – wait for it – they’re too busy doing and watching things on their laptops and phones.  It’s one thing to turn on TV’s in a public space if there’s a big game, but yesterday while eating out for lunch, they were showing drag racing, women’s golf, and tennis – all at the same time on separate screens.  Can’t we just sit quietly and talk?  Well, no because even if the TV’s were off, we’d have to work to screen out the Muzak.  Some restaurants won’t even allow the local managers to control the volume of the music; they are threatened with getting in trouble with the corporate office because study’s show that people leave more quickly when the volume is loud and the tempo is fast.  We’re over-stimulated and we’re all just accepting it.

I could go on:  video screens at the gas pump, at the grocery check out lines and in-store retail advertising, in our sports arenas, at church, in our cars, in our schools, at the airport, in the airplane, on our phones, in the bank drive-through line . . . It’s time to unplug those intrusive screens and speakers.









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