Saul Bellow, naming our mental condition "an unbearable state of distraction" decided the remote control was a principal villain: "Pointless but intense excitement holds us, a stimulant powerful but short-lived. Remote control switches permit us to jump back and forth, mix up beginnings, middles and ends. Nothing happens in any sort of order. . . . Distraction catches us all in the end and makes mincemeat of us."
— James Gleick, Saul Bellow, Faster by James Gleick