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The Loss of Novelty
Posted by GregOlsen
on
9:24 AM
At our house, we have a toy called the Fisher-Price Corn Popper™. It’s a simple contraption: handle, two wheels supporting a clear dome filled with various-colored and various-sized balls, and a platform that slowly lowers with the turning of the wheels until a bar beneath slips, causing the platform to “pop” back up, throwing the balls into disarray and causing the popcorn sound. Every child who visits has sought out the popper, has usually pulled it from the latest hiding place, and has proceeded to cause enough racket to produce harsh-sounding threats from the parents.
What the parents fail to see is the constant wonder each child expresses over such a simple device. Large chunks of time will be spent moving the popper back and forth, far longer than an adult can possibly tolerate. When the children become less enchanted with the noise and the action, they resort to play-acting, imagining the popper to be an elaborate vacuum, resulting in the adults’ need to constantly lift their feet.
Such entertainment and contentment is also dedicated to the devices of nature. Children will spend an hour watching a new-found bug or exploring the banks of a flowing canal. They can stare at a fire with exhilaration, thinking of new items which may or may not burn. They would burn everything they could get their hands on if their parents wouldn’t put an end to the game the moment a dirty diaper begins to sizzle.
So why can’t we adults share the same excitement over toys, bugs, or fire? Perhaps the brain craves novelty. While “crave” might be too strong a term, researchers Nico Bunzeck and Emrah Düzel have found that the brain not only responds to novelty, it improves in learning ability when novelty is present (Science Daily). The brain’s improvement with novelty makes sense because people tend to seek out the more difficult and complex devices to hold their attention. A cell phone that only serves one function (voice) is unheard of, and every day, phones are coming with more gadgets to keep the users fully engaged. Also, human interaction is being set aside as messy and archaic when compared to the enticements of Facebook and Twitter. And yet, even these media of stimulation grow tiresome day after day, week after week.
While Bunzeck and Düzel praise the function of novelty for its assistance in learning, I worry about the same stimulus-seeking in addicts. Addicts may seem to buck the trend of losing their fascination with a single subject, but they actually reinforce the need for novelty. The gambler seeks the big payoff, and the drug addict looks for the same unimaginable high of the original use. The sex addict, well, perhaps the sex addict searches for a weird, yet attractive woman with three breasts. Perhaps our boredom with our everyday lives is what prompts us to seek out drugs, or sex, or food. We need that thrill, the random variation that breaks up the monotony of our jobs and our responsibilities. Perhaps addicts are simply people who couldn’t find novelty anywhere else, or, more likely, don’t care to put in the effort it takes to seek out new hobbies. Taking a pill or eating a whole pepperoni pizza is too easy and convenient.
If this trend for novelty continues and more and more of our technological distractions become commonplace, we may well see the day of flying cars, teleporters, and bus rides to the moon. But, can technology keep up? If not, we might find ourselves literally dying from boredom.
--Greg
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What the parents fail to see is the constant wonder each child expresses over such a simple device. Large chunks of time will be spent moving the popper back and forth, far longer than an adult can possibly tolerate. When the children become less enchanted with the noise and the action, they resort to play-acting, imagining the popper to be an elaborate vacuum, resulting in the adults’ need to constantly lift their feet.
Such entertainment and contentment is also dedicated to the devices of nature. Children will spend an hour watching a new-found bug or exploring the banks of a flowing canal. They can stare at a fire with exhilaration, thinking of new items which may or may not burn. They would burn everything they could get their hands on if their parents wouldn’t put an end to the game the moment a dirty diaper begins to sizzle.
So why can’t we adults share the same excitement over toys, bugs, or fire? Perhaps the brain craves novelty. While “crave” might be too strong a term, researchers Nico Bunzeck and Emrah Düzel have found that the brain not only responds to novelty, it improves in learning ability when novelty is present (Science Daily). The brain’s improvement with novelty makes sense because people tend to seek out the more difficult and complex devices to hold their attention. A cell phone that only serves one function (voice) is unheard of, and every day, phones are coming with more gadgets to keep the users fully engaged. Also, human interaction is being set aside as messy and archaic when compared to the enticements of Facebook and Twitter. And yet, even these media of stimulation grow tiresome day after day, week after week.
While Bunzeck and Düzel praise the function of novelty for its assistance in learning, I worry about the same stimulus-seeking in addicts. Addicts may seem to buck the trend of losing their fascination with a single subject, but they actually reinforce the need for novelty. The gambler seeks the big payoff, and the drug addict looks for the same unimaginable high of the original use. The sex addict, well, perhaps the sex addict searches for a weird, yet attractive woman with three breasts. Perhaps our boredom with our everyday lives is what prompts us to seek out drugs, or sex, or food. We need that thrill, the random variation that breaks up the monotony of our jobs and our responsibilities. Perhaps addicts are simply people who couldn’t find novelty anywhere else, or, more likely, don’t care to put in the effort it takes to seek out new hobbies. Taking a pill or eating a whole pepperoni pizza is too easy and convenient.
If this trend for novelty continues and more and more of our technological distractions become commonplace, we may well see the day of flying cars, teleporters, and bus rides to the moon. But, can technology keep up? If not, we might find ourselves literally dying from boredom.
--Greg
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