filtering the flood

Our culture worships attention. We assume that, when we’re faced with a really hard problem, the best response is to stay focused, to lavish the dilemma with deliberate thought. And so we order a triple espresso, or chug some Red Bull, or snort some Ritalin. The point of these chemicals is to sharpen the spotlight, to keep us fixated on the task at hand. But is this a good cognitive strategy? Is distractability always a bad thing?
. . .

People bemoan the infinite distractions of the web, the way we’re constantly being seduced by hyperlinks and unexpected search results and arcane Wikipedia entries. And yes, that’s all true – I just wasted 30 minutes, for instance, searching for that Kierkegaard quote. (I ended up on a Danish culture website, which led me to a photography collection of Danish modern furniture…) But the problem isn’t distractibility per se - the problem is distractibility coupled with a failure to curate our thoughts, to monitor the relevancy of whatever is loitering in working memory. Think of the internet like an epic cocktail party, filled with chattering 24/7 conversations. Our goal shouldn’t be to ignore everything beyond earshot – that would inhibit our creativity, and keep us trapped in a very narrow world. Instead, we should keep on searching for those smart voices, so that we can remix the right data inside our head.

sometime the internet can certainly give the feeling of "drowning in possibility," but personally i kinda like that side of it, most of the time ---