an you imagine waking up without your smart phone, its news feeds, the alerts for topics of interest, or even, texting? Have you unplugged from the growing intelligence and feeds intertwined in your life, home, and work? Do you feel helpless, anxious, or out-of-body when you don’t react to the asynchronous interruptions happening with increased frequency? Are you compelled to change your “status”, take pictures of your surroundings, comment on another person’s comments, post your emotions, and inserting yourself into topics that once held little interest? Is Twitter part of your psyche—an extension of yourself?
Addiction is an animal “thing”—it’s an unpleasant human disposition for some people. In fact, there are a few experts that make a point to say every person on this planet has some form of addition. It could be addicted to TV, sweets, news feeds, social media, gaming, gambling, alcohol, drugs, sex, money, food, traveling, work, another person, sports, ice cream, GOT, and the lists go on and on and on.
Innovation addiction is relatively new, but from the time the first Space Invaders consoles hit the college campuses, the fire of seduction was ignited. And, while addiction is often characterized as an individual issue or a demographic grouping, it can also be a corporate concern or an industry obsession. Beyond individuals, the demand for data, big data by current classifications, is all encompassing in a world coming to be dominated by artificial intelligence. As intelligence multipliers expand, so does the exponential volumes needed to train and feed these human created algorithms of hidden complexity and growing capabilities.