Hacker News Reader

"All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone." - Blaise Pascal

Also, Louis CK on smartphones: http://gawker.com/louis-c-k-s-explanation-of-why-he-hates-sm...

Immediately thought of the same Louis CK bit from Conan.

Pascal's quote is revealing and shows that this problem is by no means a recent invention. Though I would wager that new technology has made it much, much easier to quickly distract ourselves from idleness.

I would argue technology has made it more obvious.

I knew someone would beat me to this. :) Even as an introvert, I rarely have moments of sadness and loneliness like this any more. I kind of miss that, and enjoy it when one does sneak its way into my life. It's really hard to regularly decide to leave the phone and "do nothing" over "doing something", even though we probably all know that the thing we're doing with our phone was really not that important.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com