Does the Net make us scatter-brained?
It doesn’t *make* us do anything, but the temptation toward scattering is powerful. Just consider the frantic concern for up-to-the-minute recency (as if any sort of profound wisdom is dependent upon having this week’s data); the daily flooding of mailboxes; the habit of scanning newsgroups and messages at breakneck pace; the fragmentation of the workday by continual email intrusions; the empty chasing of linkage trails, increasingly prevalent in both the writing and reading of hypertext documents; the widespread encouragement of fear about “missing the party”; and the lottery-like hope of discovering “great finds” on the Net. A stance of responsibility can only resist these invitations to scatter ourselves in cyberspace. We must ask, “How can we recollect ourselves, find our own centers, and subordinate the online carnival–so far as we choose to deal with it at all–to our deeper, consciously pursued purposes.
