Narcoticized By Technological Diversions

As you know, in Brave New World, soma alters the people’s minds so that they lose sight of reality and enter a fantasy land. It leads anyone who takes it to want more. Soma is a drug, and a very addictive one.

We could compare it to anti-depressants or even alcohol, but, really, soma is a subjective term . A book could be described as our soma because when we read, we become oblivious to the outside world. As we grow away from a typographic world though, it is unlikely that a book is your soma. Most likely, technology is.

Neil Postman wrote that television is our soma, but as his book was written nearly thirty years ago, our main technological diversion has changed. It is now the internet. Nicholas Carr warns that the internet delivers a “kind of sensory and cognitive stimuli— repetitive, intensive, interactive, addictive—that have been shown to result in strong and rapid alterations in brain circuits and functions.”

 All three authors of the books we have read this summer, prophesize that our actions are dangerous and that we should be aware, but are we so high on technology that we don’t care for the reality of all that it is doing to us?