Post Boredom Society

Many futurists discuss the concept of post scarcity societies, a place where the means of production are so capable, a person will not encounter a sense of need for almost any physical object or amount of energy.  Hopefully that day will come sooner than later, but before that day comes, I would like to postulate we are at the beginnings of a precursor to post scarcity, the concept of post boredom.  In our day to day lives, at least in the more affluent parts of the world, we have access to an unimaginable volume of distractions, entertainments, and knowledge.  Most of us no longer have the same sense of boredom that we had 20 years ago, if you are waiting for something to happen we have the ability to distract and amuse ourselves.  While the various boredom prevention tools are imperfect, they do represent a word where information is less and less scarce.


This post was inspired by some ramblings I had with my friend Andrew, I'm honestly not sure what it means on a deeper cultural level, just a personal observation on where it feels we are.  Within another 20 years as smart phones and internet access reaches true global saturation, it will be interesting to see what this will mean to our society.