Humour

Happy addictions

T A Balasubramanian analyses why human beings get addicted to the tools of communication.

Bobo Jitter, the troubled CIO of Bazooka Company, is back for another interactive session with Dr Don Jong, also known as The Oddfather, since he is prone to coming up with the most unusual and unexpected treatments for technology’s endless parade of anxiety-inducing conditions.

“So we were talking about enjoying work, and about being driven crazy by deadlines, Bobo,” says Dr Jong, waving his hands as though to indicate a flying bird.

“To many people a deadline can seem like a matter of some gravity,” he continues. “They feel impelled to work like owls, late into the night to meet it. And very often this ponderous deadline is totally arbitrary or—as I often observe in my own case studies of people—it is fixed to comply with some utterly unproductive bureaucratic detail. They will allow themselves to become so stressed—indeed, so distressed—that they will come to me.”

“Right, Doc. So we could wisely compromise. Like you pointed out a while ago, we can even get around the irksome nature of non-fun work. All these little wiggles make the IT world go round, and we go round with it, eh?”

“But it is more important, my boy, to comprehend why people do things. If you know the animal world, then you observe that the first reason is simply what we share with the nature of other creatures.”

“And what is that, Doc?”

“Survival. Or, as Darwin would point out—survival of the fittest. Primarily, people work day after day to earn enough money to buy food, and get money to keep a roof over their heads. But if these were their only motivations, people could work a lot less than they do today, thanks to the marvels of technology which conspires to increase human laziness generation after generation. My father once said that if it were only a question of getting the sustenance for survival, most people would not need to work for more than a few hours a week. By Monday afternoon, we would all have earned the essential part of our income. And in a welfare state, most people could survive an entire lifetime without working at all. But people still want to work at least five days a week. Why?”

“They are incurably addicted to work?”

“Addicted? Yes, of course. Incurably? I would not say so. Do you see only sad workaholics around you, Bobo? The second reason, as I always say in my fascination with the behaviour of monkeys, is that we go to work to have an active social life. Work provides people with a lot of interesting social interplay. School and the workplace are where most of us get to make our best friends and learn forms of play that keep us amused and alert. So, we like to go out to work because we are curious social animals, just like troops of my monkey friends in the jungle.”

“Ah, Doc, but monkeys do not work for a living, as far as I know. Maybe they just like hanging out—literally—together.”

“Well, Bobo, you never know. Even scientists sometimes struggle to understand why certain animals act as they do, especially social animals. A school of fish or a flock of birds, or a bunch of chimpanzees, for example, behaves in many ways like a single creature. Yet exactly how the individuals organise themselves into a ‘superorganism’ is still very much a mystery. But believe it or not, these days insights into such self-organising communities seem to come more often from computer hackers than from field biologists.”

“How is that possible, Doc?”

“Well, many programmers are creating on their desktops virtual environments populated with simulated animals. The nature of these artificial life-forms—or ‘alife’, for short—usually hinges on a special data string, which is analogous to the DNA blueprint of a living organism. This digital code defines how an a-organism interacts with its cybersurroundings and determines the likelihood that the simulated creature will reproduce. Anyway, the point is that we are addicted to being together, like these a-organisms, and if we do not meet in physical space, we like to meet in artificial spaces like the Internet.”

“That reminds me, Doc. I was reading this story about a Stanford University group’s study of Internet use. According to the story, the researchers interviewed more than 2,500 people by phone, and found that on average about one in eight respondents showed signs of ‘addictive’ Internet usage. Now, I have a problem with the study as it is described in the story.”

“Ah, and what might be this problem, son?”

“Well, in particular, the definitions of addictive behaviour seem overly broad. Consider these: 13.7 percent (more than one out of eight respondents) found it hard to stay away from the Internet for several days at a time, while 12.4 percent stayed online longer than intended very often or often. Then again, 12.3 percent had seen a need to cut back on Internet use at some point, while 8.7 percent attempted to conceal non-essential Internet use from family, friends and employers. Another 8.2 percent used the Internet as a way to escape problems or relieve bad moods.”

“Clearly, symptoms of addiction. So what is the problem?”

“The problem, Doc, is that almost all of these describe just about any human activity. Compare Internet use with a close equivalent: talking on the telephone. Each of those criteria apply to phone calls, if you observe. Now calls are certainly hard to avoid for days at a time, often run longer than intended, everyone would like to cut back—especially when the phone bill comes—non-essential calls are routinely concealed, and often used as a way to relieve a bad mood.”

“That does not make telephones any less addictive, Bobo. In modern society, many of us find our opportunities for meaningful face-to-face communication are limited. Like I was saying, humans are social animals. We like to communicate, and when we fall in love with the tools for communication, even if it is to relieve the slings and arrows of daily life, many of us who are uneasy with face-to-face contact get addicted to these tools.”

“What you’re saying Doc, is that every repetitive action is an addiction we enjoy?”

“Maybe not all. The problem is that we think that some addictions are unhealthier than others—particularly those involving new technology and people. The Internet—no doubt a highly untidy way of lumping together Web sites, e-mail, and instant messaging —is a form of enjoyable addictive communication, like the telephone. It gives you and me opportunities for human contact which we otherwise would not have. Instead of pathologising ‘Internet use’ as a form of addictive behaviour, your Stanford researchers would do better to investigate the converse—who are the stand-aloof a-organisms who do not make use of this crazy network to expand their circle of friends and contacts?”

“Moreover, it’s fun, Doc.”

“Voila! And that is the third reason why people do things—for fun. In that order. Why is an enjoyable way to spend time described as an addiction? One might as well call hanging around in cafes, lounging, reading, playing carroms, or puttering in the garden ‘addictions’. One might also call conducting psychological surveys an ‘addiction’ under the same definition.”