

A Side Effect of Digital Devices: Brain Fatigue - jscore
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/25/technology/25brain.html?_r=1&hp

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zeteo
And yet another point for Aldous Huxley, who clearly saw as early as 70 years
ago that

"...it is upon fashion, cars, and gadgets, upon news and the advertising for
which news exists, that our present industrial and economic system depends for
its proper functioning. For, as ex-President Hoover pointed out not long ago,
this system cannot work unless the demand for non-necessaries is not merely
kept up, but continually expanded; and of course it cannot be kept up and
expanded except by incessant appeals to greed, competitiveness, and love of
aimless stimulation. Men have always been prey to distractions, which are the
original sin of the mind; but never before today has an attempt been made to
organize and exploit distractions, to make of them, because of their economic
importance, the core and vital center of human life, to idealize them as the
highest manifestations of mental activity. Ours is an age of systematized
irrelevancies, and the imbecile within us has become one of the Titans, upon
whose shoulders rests the weight of the social and economic system.
Recollectedness, or the overcoming of distractions, has never been more
necessary than now; it has also, we may guess, never been more difficult."

~~~
awakeasleep
[http://thinkingreed.wordpress.com/2010/06/22/huxley-on-
distr...](http://thinkingreed.wordpress.com/2010/06/22/huxley-on-distractions)

[Further
reading]([http://books.google.com/books?id=dt8TBNyJpEkC&pg=PA129&#...</a>)<p>I
don't know if I buy that line of reasoning. Distractions only distract in
context, and I believe if your goals are firm 'distractions' hold no appeal.
That is, distractions only distract is I'd we desire or care about them, in
which case they're actually our true objectives, regardless of how
unflattering that may be to accept. But I could be wrong!

~~~
zeteo
"I believe if your goals are firm 'distractions' hold no appeal"

How I wish that were true!

~~~
ams6110
Goals are not the same thing as wishes

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GeneralMaximus
I still haven't figured out how people who multitask manage to stay sane. I,
for one, feel physical discomfort if I'm overloaded with information.
Researching a single topic for a few hours is fine, but jumping from topic to
topic leaves my brain so exhausted I have to think _hard_ to frame simple
sentences.

Conversely, a good workout or a walk in the park is _exhilirating_.

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cmurphycode
We used to think that the performance gap between people was completely
accounted for by their innate intelligence. Now, we know that working hard is
often even more important. Do you think there's an innate ability to process
information that some people are superior at?

It would make sense that if some people could practice their craft more
(without hitting the wall of diminishing returns) they would be better at what
they do.

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astrofinch
It's useful to know that brain researchers think this. It's not useful to hear
a lot of random anecdotes about multitaskers! And to think that it's you
attention-span folks who make me feel guilty when I don't read all the way
through this sort of article!

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mildweed
Unfortunately, there is no tech start-up we could conceive that would solve
this societal problem.

~~~
powrtoch
I think you're a bit quick to declare something impossible just because it
seems unlikely or counter-intuitive.

~~~
astrofinch
Yeah. For example, how about some sort of monitoring device that tells you
when it's optimal to chill out in the woods.

