An Impatience Culture? Technology, Habits, and the Affective Mind in Contemporary Media Experience

In this article, from the perspective of media theory, I will discuss the often debated issue of impatience, which many commentators identify as a distinctive response mode of our times. I will refer to the contemporary media landscape, which comprises entertaining contents, platforms, AI algorithms, and digital mobile devices; I will regard the widespread content fruition via smartphones as a very significant phenomenon in the present context; and I will focus on the impact of technologies on human affectivity, which allows to understand impatience as a responsive disposition or habit, other than just a common behavior. To understand this impact – which manifests itself, for example, in problematic or addictive internet and smartphone uses, and which may even permeate everyday “offline” interactions – it will be necessary to understand users’ experience by considering the ongoing interplay between the different levels of consciousness that characterize it. Drawing on affective, enactive, and embodied neuropsychological and theoretical approaches to the human mind, I propose overcoming an overly rigid distinction between “mindless” versus “mindful” behaviors. Therefore, I will comprehend habits by focusing on the affective mind, which is characterized by its own specific level of instinctual “awareness” – one that lies and swarms below conscious and cognitive awareness, but above the level of generalized arousal or unconscious automatisms.