This removes human agency, and it's only true if we, as individuals, want it to be true. (I'm 28, wear a watch, and use a paper notebook (http://jseliger.com/2011/05/11/eight-years-of-writing-and-th...) in addition to having an iPhone; but the iPhone only takes up as much mental bandwidth as I let it).
My brain is not a passive entity that is "being sucked up." People either let themselves be sucked up, or they don't.
EDIT: Also, if you want an interesting exploration of some of the trends you're describing, see Neal Stephenson's "Turn On, Tune In, Veg Out,": http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/17/opinion/17stephenson.html?... .
Yeah. So on top of owning an iPhone, you are also a hipster with a (trendy but useless, considering the iPhone also tells the time) watch and a notebook (it's even a Moleskine).
Way to prove the parent poster's point.
Anyway, Moleskine is nice but Miquel Rius notebooks have nicer grid paper options. :)
My point was not that the watch itself was stealing his mental bandwidth, but rather hipster culture.
2) The original poster who I'm responding to said, "the days of the wristwatch and one-function cell-phone are gone [. . .]," so I'm not sure how one can be simultaneously "trendy" and part of a declining trend (that is, watch-wearing).
3) If you'd read the link, you'd know that I don't use Moleskine notebooks any more because their quality variability appears to have increased over time.
Hipster culture is all about celebrating declining trends as trendy. It's precisely because watch-wearing is a "declining trend" that makes the hipster wear one to stand out. A hardcore hipster would probably sport a pocket watch, but check this out: http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2011/apr/28/casio-f-9...
""" If you'd read the link, you'd know that I don't use Moleskine notebooks any more because their quality variability appears to have increased over time."""
Spoken like a true hipster. As if a non-hipster cares to measure the "quality variability of his notebooks".
Now, you might be totally ignorant of the hipster culture, I'll give you that.
But the prevalence of things like Moleskine notebooks are precisely because of that demographic. Check: http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.com/2009/02/24/122-moleskine-not...
And they're doing very well. It's very rare to pick up a device that does just one thing -- the days of the wristwatch and one-function cell-phone are gone. Now everything you touch is competing to take up all your braindwidth. Information is not passive any more; it's sticky. As a consumer you are not a entity who receives services from a webapp. You are a target for absorption by way of total immersion. Potential vendors can either get on board with your addiction or lose out to others who will. This is why we buy Facebook, Google, and game ads. Your brainwidth is already being sucked up. As vendors we have to go where our potential markets already are.
If you want to talk about extrapolating history, our books are full of useful examples. Time and time again people could not make the changes necessary for society to evolve so they packed up their bags and moved. You can't move any more, and lots of immersive content providers want to take your frustration and turn it into your being plugged in all day.
Who wants to go live on the moon? We can do a lot more exciting things in our own custom-designed universe. A couple hundred more years of this and we won't be going anywhere besides LEO or doing much of anything except patting ourselves on the back and telling ourselves how many important things we have right here.