Having Too Much Information Can Narrow Your Focus

CeruleanDragon writes "This excerpt sums up Dave Pell's article at NPR pretty well: 'Google's Eric Schmidt recently stated that every two days we create as much information as we did from the beginning of civilization through 2003. Perhaps the sheer bulk of data makes it easier to suppress that information which we find overly unpleasant. Who has got time for a victim in Afghanistan or end-of-life issues with all these tweets coming in?' It's a valid point. If it's not tweets or Facebook posts, it's lengthy forum arguments or reading news articles from the time you walk in the door at work until you're ready for bed at night, and realizing you didn't actually accomplish anything else. Sometimes too much information can get in the way of living and can bury otherwise important things."

Too early.

[Anonymous Coward]

I will come back to the thread later, when there are several hundred comments to read.

every so often, you have to turn off the toys.

[swschrad]

perspective is import... OOOHHHH, shiny.

ADHD?

[KnightBlade]

Yeah it gives a new meaning to ADHD. You start reading something on slashdo.... Hey ars technica is reviewing tha.... oooo gotta retweet thi.... dammit! I missed my vanpool. It almost happened.

Re:realizing you didn't actually accomplish anythi

[Monkeedude1212]

For the longest time I couldn't understand why anyone would troll the Slashdot news articles. It's relatively easy to get positive mods on your comments if you can post something half intelligent in the first few minutes of an article going up, as long as you write in a clear and concise manner.

Except today I realized something;
No one upmodded my comments, so there weren't as many responses to my comments. There weren't as many responses so I didn't visit slashdot as much. I didn't visit slashdot as much and I actually got some coding done today.

It all makes perfect sense to me now. By having a lower karma on /., I'd be a better employee. I'm surprised it took me so long to see it.

Don't read this...

[Anonymous Coward]

...you've wasted another moment in your life. Could've become a millionaire, but oh well.

Re:Fuck Islam!

[Itninja]

You want to have fuck all three of those things? I mean one is ethereal, one is a long-dead man, and one is a religion. But hey, what rings your bell man. I am sure there are many Muslims who may not swing that way, but who appreciate the thought. How can one person have so much love in their heart?

Re:TV?

[UnknownSoldier]

Haha!

Oblg.: http://xkcd.com/386/ [xkcd.com]

Re:On the other hand

[GSV Eat Me Reality]

If you're a distractible person you can be even more distracted if you want to. If you're a productive person you can be even more productive if you want to.

  Or, if you're subject to both tendencies, you can suffer from Extreme Informational Cognitive Dissonance Syndrome and eventually end up playing Tetris all day.

  Yes, one can suffer from both at once. As an example, it's like spending four intense hours searching forums trying to find that one variable setting you need to make xorg work properly, then you promptly get distracted by an youtube video someone sent you in your email, and forget to finish the build for two days.

  This is of course just a hypothetical situation, nothing of the sort has ever happened to anyone...