
Digital Overload Is Frying Our Brains - chaostheory
http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/02/attentionlost.html
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mhartl
From TFA:

 _Wired.com: The subtitle of your book predicts a "coming dark age." Do you
really believe this?

Jackson: Dark ages are times of forgetting, when the advancements of the past
are underutilized. If we forget how to use our powers of deep focus, we'll
depend more on black-and-white thinking, on surface ideas, on surface
relationships. That breeds a tremendous potential for tyranny and
misunderstanding. The possibility of an attention-deficient future society is
very sobering._

The translation:

 _Wired.com: The subtitle of your book predicts a "coming dark age." Do you
really believe this?

Jackson: Of course not. But I was hoping to sell more books that way._

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raamdev
I sit here at 2:30AM with my hand on my head staring at the screen wondering
why the hell I'm not sleeping when my eyes find the title of this post
"Digital Overload is Frying Our Brains". Yes indeed. Exactly what I was
feeling!

Are we Information Junkies getting hooked on ingesting new information as fast
as it comes at us? If, as the article says, we are programmed to be
interrupted, how does a constant flow of interruptions effect our ability to
grow as individuals, form individual opinions, and be creative? How important
_is_ all this information anyway?

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gojomo
FTA:

 _We are programmed to be interrupted. We get an adrenalin jolt when orienting
to new stimuli: Our body actually rewards us for paying attention to the new.
So in this very fast-paced world, it's easy and tempting to always react to
the new thing. But when we live in a reactive way, we minimize our capacity to
pursue goals._

And there are now entire businesses -- social news sites, Twitter, Facebook --
that can deliver a never-ending stream of fresh interrupts to the click-
addicted. Distraction dealers. Impatience pushers.

