Five years ago everything I read about media and technology was fascinating. More than fascinating, it was a revelation! I had stepped into a new world filled with visionaries pushing the boundaries of what it means to be consumers in the information age. I ate it up, hundreds if not thousands of articles on everything from the structure of social networks to collaborative journalism.

It was new. It was bright. It was wonderful.

Cut to today and I’m a cynic. The technology is better, the information is flashier and everyone is doing a swell job of teaching Joe and Jane public why Facebook will whiten their teeth and brighten their smiles. We’ve grown up a lot, and the industry of social technology has transformed into a serious business that serious people can take seriously.

This is a good thing.

Why then, in this time of plenty when people like me should be celebrating the bold new world we helped create does it often feel like most of us would be better off doing something more productive with our lives, like buying velour jackets and starting up a traveling flea circus?

The reason is the same reason why an astronaut might think his day to day grind is boring, why Picasso probably didn’t go in much for art shows and as the philosopher Tom Waits once said why, “shoe shiners have worn out, scuffed up shoes.”

When you eat, breath and dream anything for long enough it starts to seem boring. It starts to be boring. When a thing becomes like air, what’s lost is your sense of awe. You become numb to the basic majesty of it and worse you lose perspective on what made you see that majesty in the first place.

This is a problem. It eats away at your ability to do good work, and will (don’t quote me on this) probably lead to a psychotic break.

What then should us jaded technologists do with ourselves before we end up in Bellevue? Well, outside of my flea circus idea, the best thing anyone can do to keep from losing perspective is to step away from the little box of comfort they have built for themselves over the years and understand all the amazing things happening at the edges. Social Media folks can start looking at group psychology and sociology when building online communities. SEOs can turn a keyword jaundiced eye to information architectures. Web developers and technologists can spend more time really exploring the mobile revolution, augmented reality and the new information systems that will one day seem boring and stale to us all. We can all realize that the world is a is a big place, and understanding it means understanding all those weird and wonderful spaces where concepts intersect.

In short, the only solution to old information is new information and the only way to stay creative in a world where saturation is an inexorable truth of existence is to constantly look for ways to integrate new stuff into old ways of doing things.

Not only will this help make you better at what you do, more importantly, it might just keep you sane.

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