Future Shock..

"Too much change in too short a period of time"
....that's how the legendary socialist and futurist Alvin Toffler had predicted in the 70s. And how true it is. The world is shrinking, time is flying faster than ever before (or its just me), innovations are happening at the speed of light and to add to our troubles; information has become way too accessible and technology has taken over our lives. All this availability of required and not-so-required things is making my span of attention and interest shorter and shorter by the day. I want more, I want something new to entertain myself.

• Online chatting (specially with strangers) - Bored!
• SMSing (looked like a necessity in college days) - Bored!
• Mobile phones (never thought that I will survive without it) - Bored!
• Social networking (first orkut was he king and then the throne was captured by facebook) - Bored!
• Online games (there was a time - not too long back- when I could spend entire day and night just playing games on the net) - Bored!

Now mind craves for something new...to learn and exploit it...and then forget about it. But amidst all this, all this obsession about NEW and exciting, the few things which never can be replaced are the things which are there since centuries, may be since the beginning of the mankind. These are the activities, things, experiences which still excite me or are still there with me. Things like:

• Going out and playing some real sports - Hit!
• Reading physical books (specially outside) - Hit!
• Doing calculations on paper (yeah I don't prefer excel sheet for simpler stuff) - Hit!
• Going out and meeting people (rather than spending life on second life) - Hit!
• Watering plants - Hit!
• Writing on paper instead of on computer - Hit!
  

Having said all this, I still crave for something new and better. I guess when Mr. Toffler did his predictions (which are turning out to be damn right), he would not have imagined how it is going to confuse us and complicate things for us. We are stuck between things we enjoy and things we should enjoy and the difference is minimizing with time. As the post progressed, I realized that span of attention is not the only issue here. The major issue is a confused and contradicting mind. The definition of pleasure is changing, its becoming more of what should be enjoyable according to certain set of definitions against what actually is. And I don't want that.