It's getting so people have a shorter and shorter attention span in this society, cos there's too much media and communications stuff coming at them in short bursts and distracting them. Television has almost certainly been the biggest offender in that regard with its constant commercial interruptions of programming, and movies are being filmed in a way that fragments one's attention also (multiple sudden quick cuts from one image to another to another to another...), and cell phones interrupt people EVERYWHERE, but what about the computer?

What I find is occurring in particular is this...my Homepage is derailing my train of thought almost every time I open it. I decide to go look for something on Google, but first I need to open a new page on the screen...and up pops my Homepage, which is RogersYahoo...and what appears on that Homepage?

A picture of some girl reporter who lapsed into gibberish on air...and a story about why it happened. (Do I care?) Below that, more stories about: "Wrestler forfeits against girl", "Canadian travel trend on the rise", "Parents can't take baby home", "Wall Street treads water", "Britney Spears eats her poodle", "Obama to consecrate urinal in Blind River", etc....

(Okay, I made a couple of those up...)

Anyway, you get the general picture.

Now, If I say to you, "There's an elephant in the driveway!", what do you start thinking about? You start thinking about an elephant in the driveway, and you can't help it. Your mind instantly focuses on the latest sensory input in an automatic fashion....and loses its focus on previous input or intention...and may even forget previous input or intention, specially if the new input sparks some kind of interest, even at the most trivial level of idle curiosity.

Thus my Homepage in a second or less, has diverted my thoughts from whatever the hell it was that I opened a new page for in the first place and has led me off down some blind alley of probably useless information that I'd never have spent a moment's time on if I'd had a chance to decide ahead of time about the matter. After I finally get back from that blind alley, it may take me quite some time to remember what in the world it was that I really opened the new page FOR!!! Or I may not succeed in remembering it at all...and that's really annoying.

Thus are the brains of a nation gradually turned to chowder. ;-D It's very good for advertisors, very bad for the general public in my opinion, and it has to be contributing to the rise of attention deficit disorder.

I think I have a remedy. If I change my homepage from the RogersYahoo page to just plain Google, that would solve this particular problem. I wonder if my Rogers provider will object?

Then too, will I be able to bear being deprived of staying right up to date on all the latest "news" about Britney Spears, the girl who lapsed into gibberish on air, and the wrestler who just lost his title to an eggplant?

It's a tough one....