Recognizing Insufficient Digital Knowledge Anxiety

Warning: This post contains tongue in cheek material.  Future posts under this category will be marked TIC.

PUE occasionally provides updates for members of the general public trying to keep up with the latest developments in the worlds of animate and inanimate objects. You may wonder why this kind of aid falls under the purview of a psychoanalytically oriented blog.  First, we find that lack of up-to-date information often acts as a trigger for what is known as "Insufficient Knowledge Anxiety,” or IKA. The condition of IKA may lead to frank Panic Attacks when sufferers are trying to meet production deadlines and to states of Depression when untreated for periods longer than six weeks.  Second, passivity with regard to updating knowledge may in itself a symptom of a serious condition, e.g. narcissistic personality disorder marked by delusions of omniscience.

PUE's first ever update is on the subject of a sub-disorder of IKA known as Insufficient Digital Knowledge Anxiety, or IDKA. Armed with the following reprint from the DSM-PUE (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Pyschiatry, PUE edition) you should be able to diagnose yourself and take remedial action if necessary:

Insufficient Digital Knowledge Anxiety
Five or more of the following symptoms have been present during the same three month period.

1. You spend hours scouring your shelves for books you stored on the Kindle app of your ipad.
2. You don’t know the difference between Snapchat and Instagram.
3. You’re still using the previous model of your iphone.
4. You believe the Help menu on your computer program lists the item you need help with
5. You think new operating systems improve surgical outcome
6. You’re looking for the instruction booklet packed with your new digital gadget
7. You don’t know the difference between a “meme” and a “trope”
8. Your children laugh at your digital technology questions
9. Your friends laugh at your digital technology questions
10. You think “user interface” is a meet-up group for drug addict

---