My partner and I were both born in the early 1980s which is quite fortunate for our relationship because we can talk about some shared experiences we have had while growing up.
I consider being born in the 1980s a special time – though I am sure everybody considers their generation special – we got to live through the analog era until we are of age, yet we were young enough to grasp the opportunities of the digital age. It makes me occasionally look at the tech in my hands in wonder because I remember the old days when friends were uncontactable even if they were running late, people going overseas means an actual separation, and books were more interesting than tv. Once in a while I still feel amazed when I text my friends living thousands of miles away and they respond instantly. What a crazy thing to be able to have a real-time conversation with so much physical distance between us.
Last week I was lamenting to my partner how easily bored I get these days. I complained that Singapore – being a country 50km wide – is so small that we are deprived of road trips and micro-culture experiences, and we keep browsing the same 2-3 stationery stores. But in the next moment an interesting memory came up: as a kid I spent hours at the same stationery store every day after dinner. How did I do that, I wondered aloud to my partner. Then it hit me. We had no mobile phones back then. There wasn’t the internet to entertain me, so looking at rows of stationery was what gave me my dopamine hits.
My partner prefers audio books to reading, and unlike me she wasn’t into books as a kid. She finds browsing physical books at a store frustrating and limiting, like how can we just merely go by the spine and covers? I told her back then that was what we did. Since we didn’t have the internet we had no idea which were the well-reviewed books, so we relied heavily on the spines. I remember going to the library staring at shelves and shelves of book spines, sorted alphabetically by author’s surname. When an author was good we devoured all the books by them, because picking an unknown author was such a gamble. Looking at spines at the library still gives me a thrill now, like being at a candy store.
I also used to anticipate the release of CDs by my favourite artistes. I remember carefully unwrapping the plastic wrapper, slowly sliding out the sleeve notes and flipping them tenderly — the flip of each page felt like a surprise. I examined the credits in detail, taking note of the producer and musicians of the album. My partner was surprised when I shared this with her, because I don’t seem like I would care about such details, and words like “slow” and “careful” are not words that I would use to describe myself.
I realised the wonders of technology and progress have compressed our experiences. Now we listen to a single track available instantly on a music streaming platform. It doesn’t come with a sleeve, there is no context to the track in relation to the album — if there is even an album in the first place — I have no idea who are the producers, writers, musicians while listening because I can’t slowly touch and marvel at the sleeve as I listen, there is no sleeve that would show signs of age and tatter where some pages would show more signs of weather because I spent hours trying to memorise the lyrics. Did the album have a narrative the artiste had carefully sculpted, was there a photoshoot that was deliberately styled in accordance to the theme of the album? There is no fancy packaging, no graphic design that would stop me in my tracks, no experience that was carefully designed to delight and enchant you the moment you set your eyes on the cd at the shop.
Now everything appears in an instant, we don’t even have the anticipation and satisfaction of a large, slow download on our 14.4kbps modem anymore. There is no longer a cherishing that comes with the agony of a wait. It is a flattening and compression of a formerly multi-dimensional experience: no more smell of paper, no tactile feel of textures, no wonderment of entering a physical store, no excited conversations with the shopowner who had seen me for the thousandth time — they have seen me more than my parents and know my music/book preferences intimately. Back then we encountered the things we love with a full body experience, and now it is just a pair of eyes narrowly focused on rapidly changing pixels.
This relates to that note I wrote last week on life, novelty and addiction. It seems like there is such a thing is too much novelty. Scientifically speaking it is easily explained by neuroscience: our brains and bodies like homeostasis and don’t like too much of anything, so it downregulates our brain’s receptors to cope with it, reducing our ability to feel the same intensity with the same amount of stimuli. This is why we stop feeling the same excitement when we experience the same thing over and over again.
Everything used to be so slow and expensive — both in terms time and money — so we could only have a limited number of novel experiences in a given period. Watching movies used to be a treat, and now we are numb to the latest blockbusters. Tiktok feels way more engaging for some people rather than them sitting through a 2-hour movie. Scrolling endlessly through statuses seems more interesting than reading a 300-page book. Who wants to read long blog posts, in-depth reporting and scientific journals when we can just quickly tap through instagram stories?
Now we can have millions of novel interactions in a day. Just like that guy who busted his lifetime’s novelty budget by abusing heroin, the availability of novelty in modern times makes nothing feel novel anymore.
Strangely it took a stranger’s drug abuse story for me to truly grasp why I’m so easily bored. I have always been easily bored even as a child, but now it is much worse. Back then I could entertain myself by going to the same store, now I have to be on a plane to somewhere in order to feel something.
I am not romanticising the past in a sense that I wish that we can go back to before times. It is just thought-provoking how I am mindlessly experiencing this world through a speed and convenience that I’ve never questioned seriously. If it is easy and there, why not? It is precisely because I loved tech that I’ve only wanted to see its promise and benefits, not how it is shrinking me.
This world is still multi-dimensional but some of us only experience a very narrow part of it now. Libraries still exist for now, and we can still visit record stores and book shops. It just feels like too much work: why go to a physical location when something is just instantly available online? I forget it is not just the end-product itself I am seeking, but also the sensory pleasures and surprises that come along with acquiring it. I have also forgotten what it was like to build relationships with my neighbourhood stores. Now in my current neighbourhood, there are hardly any independent stores. Because of the inherent economics in singapore, there are only chains. If there are any remaining, they are slowly dying out.
This is not a moralistic story about how speed and tech is bad. It is about being aware of the whole spectrum of experiences we can potentially have, the richness of our environments, people and their creativity. It is okay to choose speed and convenience, as long as we know what we are giving up, and how our souls and brains are responding to it.
Having undiagnosed adhd my brain is more susceptible to feeling a deadening numbness, a numbness that sinks me into depression. To me it is a matter of fact that this is how our brains function: we need novelty to survive, and yet we can’t have too much of it in order to continue being capable of feeling it.The compression of our experiences from a full-bodied sensory experience to a flat digital download has also caused a flattening of my soul and what I am capable of appreciating.
It is a curse to be unable to appreciate things in this world. It makes my existence a dread instead of being able to experience the richness that is available around me. I am always constantly seeking what I cannot have, because I’ve lost the capacity to savour what my 10 year old self would kill to experience and have.