Digital Media Proliferation and the Advancement of Man

When I think about how plugged in my day is, it’s amazing I can get anything of value done. Between the Tivo, iPod, Blogs, Newspaper, and DVDs I barely have time to really advance my mind by taking in something really stimulating. With all of this media around us, are we being distracted from reading or talking about something that has meaning to ourselves and to society. To make matters worse, the last 50 years have been an accumulation of so much material to read. As an academic, it seems like there is so much material from so many disciplines to read that there will never be a way to catch up and still keep current. Will we have to become so specialized that there won’t be any way to do valuable cross-discipline work anymore?