JulieLeung.com: a life told in tidepools

A term I learned from the latest issue of Technology Review, in an article that asked Can we trust people to know what makes them happy?

From Technology and Happiness by James Surowiecki

Take lottery winners. One famous study showed that although winners were very, very happy when they won, their euphoria quickly evaporated, and after a while their moods and sense of well-being were indistinguishable from what they had been before the victory. Psychologists even have a word for the phenomenon: “hedonic adaptation.”

So, too, with technology: no matter how dramatic a new innovation is, no matter how much easier it makes our lives, it is very easy to take it for granted. You can see this principle at work in the world of technology every day, as things that once seemed miraculous soon become mundane and, worse, frustrating when they don’t work perfectly.

[…]

One of the key insights of happiness studies is that people have a very hard time being content with what they have, at least when they know that others have more. Today, technological change is so rapid that when you buy something, you do so knowing that in a few months there’s going to be a better, faster version of the product, and that you’re going to be stuck with the old one. Someone else, in other words, has it better.

Happiness, if it is to last, has to be more than things. More than having what is hot or holding what we want in our hands. Something good to remember at this time of year…