Addiction

There's a familiar story about a mouse hitting a button, maybe red, to get dosed with cocaine. It does so, consistently, in preference to food and sex.

I prefer to think of the button as being a mouse button. And instead of cocaine, there's the Internet. Some mice have a simple mouse manufactured by an elitist fruit company, but the vast majority of mice have a Swiss knife of a mouse. It's got a minimum of 3 buttons, and one of them scrolls content up and down on a receptacle that, no matter how large, always seems too small. In fact, if there was a way to crawl into the receptacle I imagine the problem with these mice would be short-lived.

But that's the Internet. Publishers are driven through by the number of clicks their content gets and - sometimes - even the quality of the clicks if that makes any sense. Thus, publishers typically cut their content into smaller pieces so that the mice have to click through more links to get their doses of content. Each click is some revenue for the publisher. Click. Click. Click. And the majority of the mice, even hearing the urban legend of how they are just revenue streams for publishers, continue to click no matter the quality or quantity of the content. Click. Click. Click.

It's sort of funny. 'Disruptive technology', as a phrase, is considered by many self-proclaimed pundits to meet the definition here:

A disruptive technology or disruptive innovation is a technological innovation that improves a product or service in ways that the market does not expect, typically by being lower priced or designed for a different set of consumers.

I offer another definition which is based more on the meaning of the words in the phrase rather than a heavily marketed conceptualization meant for marketing. Remember when the web had more content than marketing?

Disruptive derives from disrupt - which means to cause turmoil or disorder, or to interrupt continuity.

Technology's definition is a bit more interesting and vague - but for the purposes of this entry, we'll go with the following:

...the branch of knowledge that deals with the creation and use of technical means and their interrelation with life, society, and the environment, drawing upon such subjects as industrial arts, engineering, applied science, and pure science.

Therefore, a 'disruptive technology' - outside of the pundit-speak - is actually a form of technology that causes disruption, turmoil, disorder and interrupts continuity. A mobile handset against the ear when driving. Newsfeeds and associated technologies that people are addicted to and follow to the point of distraction. The list can go on - and should go on. In fact, the very phrase 'disruptive technology' has been taken by marketers and twisted into a meaning altogether different.

Last week I ran into someone I know who had been on a two week drunk and had found sobriety at the bottom of one of the days he upturned. During the drunk, I'd seen him and mentioned little things to him like, "you're more easy to deal with when sober" and so forth, but of course that had no effect - saying it the right way doesn't alienate them, but saying it the right way literally has no effect.