Confessions of an info-maniac?

It turns out that using e-mail, IM and other communication tools too much might lower your IQ. Research sponsored by Hewlett-Packard found that our addiction to checking our e-mail may cause a significant reduction in IQ.

“Me fail English, that’s unpossible!”

Well Ralph, it looks like the distractions of multi-tasking and communication technologies may harm one’s ability to focus–a feeling I expressed to some degree in blog posting number one. If these findings find more support (especially across generations), one must begin to wonder what technology is doing to us. Imagine an inverse relationship between productivity and IQ, or perhaps a world where a cut-paste-reply culture replaces hard-earned creativity. …How many times have I been distracted while composing this post; how many good ideas were lost?

Could there be a technological answer for a technologically-created problem?
[I’ve often thought that a “lock” application (meaning: only let me use MS Word for the next hour) wouldn’t be such a bad idea.] Perhaps better focus on my part could make for a less-rambling post…

I’m still thinking about the role of editors in the world…

As anyone who has an iPod, or any other large library of material, knows: sometimes valuable material can get buried. In the iPod example, chances are that unless a playlist is created, a song you like may get played only rarely. The methods of getting a favorite song to play more often include creative uses of metadata, some kind of search, playing a file directly, as well as using a playlist. In other words, short of somehow knowing what file (or kind/attribute of a file in a search) you’re looking for, there needs to be some kind of active step taken to make the item more prominent.

So what does it mean? There needs to be some person or technology which plays a role of helping us know what we may potentially be interested in. Not only does the model save us time, but it also helps create personal connections of interest. From iPods to social cohesion; who’d have guessed.

No Internet?!?

Charter broadband is down right now, so I’m dialed in to the campus network. I never thought I’d be going back down to dial-up. I’ll bet there are a lot of angry students tonight!!