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And like the SEALs flipping the switch, the Googler’s “communal vocational ecstasy” relies on changes in brain function. “Attending festivals like Burning Man,”17 explains Oxford professor of neuropsychology Molly Crockett, “practicing meditation, being in flow, or taking psychedelic drugs rely on shared neural substrates. What many of these routes have in common is activation of the serotonin system.”
Stealing Fire
Steven Kotler, Jamie Wheal
No matter how you draw your staircases and interpret them, they are valuable because they keep you grounded in the observation made at the beginning of this chapter: all our choices are among life stories that end with our individual deaths.
The technology of TV had a remarkable ability to beckon people at specific times and then hold them enthralled for hours. Its creative commercials told them to acquire more technologies. They obeyed. I noticed that other bossy technologies, such as the car, also seemed to be able to get people to serve them, and to prod them to acquire and use still more technologies (freeways, drive-in theaters, fast food). I decided to keep technology to a minimum in my own life. As a teenager, I was having trouble hearing my own voice, and it seemed to me my friends’ true voices were being drowned out by the loud conversations technology was having with itself. The less I participated in the circular logic of technology, the straighter my own trajectory could become.
What Technology Wants
Kevin Kelly
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