Breaking the habits : a theory of evolution

With new technologies, there seems to be a constant and fast improvement of the tools : would you imagine, 10 years ago, that you will surf on the Internet, watch TV, listen to your favorite songs, take picture and record videos with a single device: your cellphone? I remember of an italian article I read a few years ago, entitled : "Napoleon and the cellphone". The journalist imagined how History would have been like if Napoleon, or Romeo and Juliet had had a cellphone. According to him, Napoleon would have won Waterloo, and Juliet could have warned Romeo that she was'nt actually dead and they would have lived happily ever after. It underlines the fact that this kind of tools became indispensable for us. It has created new habits which are now deeply rooted in our everyday life. New technologies invite us to learn new habits and to adapt ourselves to new models, to break the routine and the old habits.


The Internet is probably the media that force us the most to be involved and to keep ourselves up-to-date. It encourages us to break our old habits and to evolve, from our traditional TV to streaming videos and catch-up TV, from CDs to immaterial music, from shops to online shopping and online auctions, from mails and phone to instant messaging and so on. The problem is, the more we get used to these tools, the more we become addicted to them. We, net surfers, are all a little addicted but for some, it is a real disease, called "internet addiction disorder".
Clinics are opening all over the world to cure this particular pathology: in Beijing or in New York for instance. The website of the center for internet addiction recovery even propose an Internet Addiction Test so you can see if you really need rehab.
The pernicious effect of the Internet is that addicts must go online to find the test: a bit ironic, don't you think?

I let you test your addiction, and then ask yourself what is your habit to break.

MM