Why do we feel so compelled to 'just check' if we've had an email (at often ridiculous times of the day when we should have better things to do). Or, indeed, check our blog feeds to see if anyone is posting?
It all (possibly) comes down to Schrodinger's Uncertainty Principle. You know the thing: cat; box; is it alive or is it dead; until you look you can't know, so it exists in both states (I know there's more to it than that - radioactive isotopes and poison come in some where - but you get the gist). Well that's exactly what the world of digital information is like.
Once upon a time we had to survive on letters, parcels and postcards (blog posts for a pre-digital world!). These were concrete (not literally, obviously) 'things' that arrived twice a day. And if nothing came through the letter box you could be certain it wasn't going to. There was no point in going back to check at 2 in the morning.
Now though people can send emails or post on blogs from anywhere in the world 24:7. And this information is then instantly available to us, wherever we are and whatever the time is. But until we check we can't know this; they remain in Schrodinger's state of being yet not being (it's all 0s and 1s until our technology makes sense of it).
But unlike Schrodinger and his imaginary cat, we can't cope with this uncertainty. We have to have a peak, and a new neurosis for the digital generation is born.
No idea what this actually amounts to, but I like it as an idea. Maybe it's a comment on the insubstantial, illusory and transitory nature of the world we live in and lives we lead. After all, Youtube wouldn't exist if people didn't keep sneaking a peak to check whether the cat in the box is still alive. Will think on.
And I should point out that, as an idea, this isn'ts not totally mine. The original inspiration came from a comment in an article I read recently.
