Diversions. Playful, Stupid, Cute and Funny Evolution

Diversions are the aspects of contemporary screen-bound life, which attract us to procrastinate. Rather than basing my research in regular responses to these as distractions to be critiqued, this thesis examines how they actually function: What makes digital games, mindless webbrowsing, cute animal clips and political mockery such attractive media forms? The thesis develops a method of modelling production and engagement with diversions, to explore why something diverts. Diversions are conceptualized as unintended consequences from the meeting between populations of users, producers and media forms. Digital development is thus neither entirely intentional, nor fully random. The thesis argues that our inclination to divert our attention results from a common trait of human cognition. This is shown through rendering cognition as a system with three central tendencies: it can crystallize into clear purposeorientation or destabilize into open-ended sensory intensity, but mostly it stays in-between these extremes, flowing together with whatever offers playful, stupid, cute and funny possibilities. The emergence of diversions is traced from contemporary digital culture and the uniquely human, reconfigured as dynamic behavior shared with microbes, vegetation, fungi, animals and hunter-gatherers. Diversions are shown to be influential for evolution by retaining innovation with stability, which increases rapidity and possibilities of change, with the likelihood of this change being advantageous. More than any other species we have tapped into and differentiated the evolutionary intensifiers of diversions. Our current preoccupation with diversions is indicative of how vital diversions have been for our success in dominating the planet, and diversifying our own possibilities here.