I’ve only gotten to write about this today, but its something I’ve been thinking about for some months now. With the iPhone my iPod application really has no ‘off’ switch. It’s always there, and only needs to know whether to play or not to play (how Shakespearean).

As a human interacting with the device I noticed a brief adaptation interval pass in my mind. Ultimately, I like the efficiency of not fiddling with on/off options, but I did note my own pause, literally phone in hand, to adjust to this concept.

This leads me to an idea I’ve had brewing for some time now. My college mentor and I would often discuss the huge shifts happening in the world as technology is introduced to society. For example, on the one hand we have people controlling their media intake like never before. We’re literally 100% in charge of the media we consume. That’s huge both on our personal ability to grow and broaden our horizons and in terms of the havoc its creating in the advertising and entertainment industries. We’re talking billion of dollars of havoc. And a lot of jobs lost and company’s restructured. Big, big stakes here.

But, it also happened with barely a noticeable ripple in the lives of we people using these technologies. We all adapted pretty quick to the TV remote, the VCR, the DVD, TiVo, on-demand media, the Internet, TV on the Internet, social media, etc. etc. etc.

Maybe we had a brief pause like the one I had with the iPod app on my phone, but we basically took hold of the new technology, charged on with life, and never looked back.

This is amazing (and possibly a little troubling). On the one hand, entire business models are undermined, and social structures (like courtship in the case of social media) are transformed. On the flipside, people just sort of say, “hey, cool”, and move on integrating this incredible (and to businesses, highly disrupting) technology into their lives.

Now think about all the things we interact with daily. Think about how seamlessly we engage with new media, new ideas, new ways of thinking, new cultures, new art forms, etc. Many we’d never have occasion to contact even 20 years ago. It’s right here in front of our keyboards. And its happening on a global scale.

Who knows what tectonic shifts are really taking place, we’ve not had enough time to learn and it doesn’t seem anyone creating the technologies is pausing to think about it. We humans just adapt and integrate as the trappings of our world (businesses, culture) feel the aftershocks.

Now, lest I come off a Luddite, I believe that by and large most of these innovations are positive and for the better of us all – personally, culturally and economically. But I think there are growing pains to be experienced in the process, and opportunities for abuses as well. And somewhere in the back of my mind, I wonder what the limit of the human mind’s ability to adapt is. How fast can we cope with change? Future Shock to a swipe at this 3+ decades ago. I’m sure more people have since. It’s an important question.

I once read an article where the microwave was blamed for undermining the family dinner. Silly on the one hand. Some ‘truthiness’ to it on the other. And regardless, what has the impact been on families that are spending less time talking to each other over dinner?

Exactly.