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I saw this article on Slashdot and it really struck a chord. This “Internet A.D.D.” is something that I’ve been personally struggling with lately. For example, one of my previous rants was my frustration with my parents dial-up connection. I can’t be bothered to wait 10 WHOLE SECONDS for a web page to load! And I’ve certainly noticed (especially at work) that I can’t keep on task. I takes all I have to keep from clicking on the Thunderbird “new email message.” Even if I do make a conscious decision to ignore the email, it eats at me until I finally give in and switch over to my email client…seriously, I’m pathetic.

Here’s a snippet that I particularly like. This is in reference to the dopamine release when we’re excited by something new…

–snip–
We have so many options, reward centers that we never had before,” says John Ratey, who teaches at Harvard and is a psychiatrist specializing in attention deficit disorder. “I think that’s why we’re seeing more of this. There are more demands on our attention and less training for us to stop and take it all in. We seem to be amazing ourselves to death.”
–snip–

Anyway, give the article a read. It’s very well written and challenges some of the trends that us technology geeks are so proud of.

Life Inter Rupted