land of a thousand words

Recently I found myself reading a terribly exciting article on the development of archiving when suddenly a title shot forwards from the page - Future Shock by Alvin Toffler. I found it online for only £3 and promptly ordered it. I hold the book in my hands right now but have only briefly flicked through it. It seems to be a sociological prediction of the future. A future in which humanity becomes so saturated with information on a daily basis that what is truly important to us becomes difficult to find, we lose perspective in a barrage of facts, figures, opinions and graphics. The book was written in the 70’s and touches on a lot more besides this premise, yet this is what it has been remembered for.

I think Toffler was spot on, and I think that time is now.

Take today for example: I awoke and over breakfast was reading the economist and listening to the radio. I then loaded up my homepage and was assaulted by my three pages of RSS feeds – all of them – twenty-one to be precise - screaming for my attention. I read about what was going on inside Second Life, I read that Holland was seeking to ban the burqa, I read that an infamous blogger from Utah has been to Calgary for a conference. I then watched a music video in which a Japanese Rap Artist performed inside a space elevator and then read an article on how this was a significant milestone in the acceptance of this revolutionary idea into the mainstream. I then checked my hotmail, my dialectic web account, my facebook profile, my myspace profile and my bookcrossing profile. I then checked msn to see if anyone worth chatting to was online before rechecking my dialectic account.

I then set off for the library listening to the Planetary Societies most recent podcast that I had downloaded the night before. On arrival I took out my six books and tried to read them whilst simultaneously breaking off to read more of the economist and writing up ideas for all manner of cool blog entries. I was then shooed out of the library and returned, while listening to the final part of that podcast, to my flat (stopping off to buy today’s paper) where I am now writing up this blog. Incidentally this is the second I have written today – my first has been ‘postponed’ after on a reread it seemed I was in favour of a new holocaust, this time aimed at all followers of Abraham. I have wasted a good hour so far and the radio is now back on to check the football results.

All in all I have done little but bob up and down on the tides of the media. Where in all this does the real world, my First Life – fit in?

I realise (unlike some at the Daily Mail) that this phenomenon says more about my lack of self-discipline than it does about any new evils of the technological age. Whenever I sit down to work my head is just buzzing with ideas – running in a thousands directions at once – all this information is having the same effect as binge eating E-numbers would. I just can’t settle on any one thing for too long. My attention span has been eroded to zero.

This is all leading up to tell you, my wondrous readership, how I have decided to deal with this problem which is so dangerously exacerbating the desperate work related straights I now find myself in.

Only I find the stigma attached to this harmless dark art so embarrassing that I shall refrain from telling you just yet. And as such I leave you with this anti-climax of a cliff hanger.

…