We have become a generation haunted by ghosts. Not the specters of folklore, but the digital ghosts of our own making. They live in the red circles of unread notifications, the "pinned" conversations we’ve been meaning to get back to for weeks, the thirty-four open tabs on our browsers, and the thousands of unread emails sitting in our pockets. We think of these things as "data," but our brains experience them as open loops—as a series of small, nagging debts that we never quite pay off.
This is the hidden tax of the modern world. Every unaddressed notification is a tiny fragment of our attention that is being held hostage. Even when we aren't looking at our screens, our subconscious is still "running the program" of these unfinished tasks. It’s why we feel a sense of low-level dread when we try to relax. It’s why we feel exhausted even on a slow day. We aren't just carrying our physical lives; we are dragging an invisible, digital shadow that grows heavier with every "I'll get to that later."
