Remember a Place Called Earth?

Escaping into fantasy worlds, whether nostalgic or futuristic, is good for our mental health and creativity. But digital media won't let us return to Earth.

We are as easily enchanted by imagined, exotic futures as we are by fond memories of the past. There is no difference in the psychology of looking backwards or forwards in time, the brain makes its best guest at what could happen in the future, based on what we’ve already experienced.

We indulge in this fantasy world usually as an escape from present fears or difficult events. This behaviour is part of our evolution as humans, it’s a way of coping with any immediate threats to our survival. Dreaming or idealising about past or future events is perfectly healthy in moderation, but when we are presented with unlimited opportunities to feed our habit, nostalgia or wild speculation becomes a drug dependency. The media and advertising world has, during the last century, built an entire industry on exploiting our future fears or past fantasies, it’s a lucrative business model. However, digital media now presents a more serious problem, where our fixations with fantasy becomes addiction, which erodes our optimism.

It’s old news that media interests have exploited our natural need for escapism and has become an addiction we now crave on a daily basis. Andy Warhol famously predicted all this, that everyone would get access to fame. Everything that’s happening in today’s social media world is nothing new, our brains are all wired the same. The difference back in the days before digital were that, fame or attention seeking, were the preserve of the entertainment industry. In today’s disposable content age we can indulge our fantasies 24/7, airbrushing over all the dull bits of our past or paint bleak pictures of the future. In this unreal world, we find ourselves hooked on pseudo-realities, creating our own personal theme parks. But we lose our enthusiasm for change and progress, forever stuck in screen-based rabbit holes, while real issues outside go unchecked.

Today’s smart computers are really cool pieces of hardware, amazing feats of human engineering but are, more often than not, loaded with marketing software. Even the apps you pay for are running a permanent campaign to retain your attention. You are never fully able to relax and enjoy the experience of using cool technology. Free software is even more intrusive, though we are beginning to learn that free comes at a heftier price than any cash payment. Free stuff means we are trading our personal freedom for addiction and distraction. The small carrot we are thrown is that we can freely indulge our fantasies while being served advertising. Sounds like a bad deal! I know that this trade-off has, at times, tested my own mental stability. Fantasy can be the warm glow of nostalgia or the reassurance of distant dystopia. It is certainly healthy to explore unreal situations, past glories or failures, particularly when solving newer problems. But today’s media wants us living in a fantasy world permanently.

I wonder when our ever distracted digital avatars might finally grasp the magnitude of the real issues that face the jaw-dropping planet outside the window. How we might use smart technology and digital media more wisely and less like drug addicts (the pushers are not helping matters). I’d like to restore my freedom to think without relentless distraction from promotional interests. People feel optimism reading compelling stories or designers strive to build great experiences. The beautifully designed, cutting edge devices in our pockets have the potential to house amazing digital experiences that help us navigate the real world. The digital business model needs to change.

I’ve talked about our natural, human instinct for fantasy, whether light or dark, to illustrate how this healthy way of thinking has been exploited by marketing interests. It’s such a powerful weapon that’s been employed since the dawn of modern industry and the natural need to grow economies. For most of that time, marketing was passive, though could still manipulate. But we’ve now reached a tipping point, via the convenience of the web, where our mental stability and appetite to progress and fix problems is hampered by our inability to even notice the outside world at all.

It’s mentally healthy to indulge in a little retrospection and maybe even challenge our fears about dark futures (though I’ll just watch a disaster movie). However, with digital media we are lured into fantasy worlds that are made hard to escape.

GUITAR PK is a musician and recording artist from the UK.