Distracted: The Erosion of Attention And The Coming of Dark Age is the name of a new book written by Maggie Johnson of Boston Globe. The title of the book sounds rather bleak and foreboding and is telling  us what we might already know - we need to slow down and perhaps lead a gentler life?

As Maggie puts it the book essentially looks at our lives and the cost we pay for being constantly distracted via new technological developments. We all know what that means…checking on that twitter feed, or compulsively checking your emails on your BlackBerry or laptop, texting, SMSing…you name it. There is no dearth in the arsenal of distraction. Take today for instance. The big tech news was the end to Yahoo-Microsoft merger talks and how Yahoo is now partnering with Google. Instantly, there were tons of twitters (mine included), blog posts and comments and after writing my twitter thought to myself that I should have focussed on the task at hand and not written that quick twitter post. Later on in the evening I wondered which blog post will give me the big, strategic picture of this breaking news? In the old days (about 200 days ago) I would have obsessively gone through my RSS feeds and Google alerts to find out what each writer has to say and found myself reciting facts and not having enough time to digest and synthesize the various strands of information. Not any longer. I have reached a threshold of sorts and am unable to consume boatload of information and being constantly distracted by this information stream. I need some kind of network acceleration and caching device in my brain that will cache and reduce the wear and tear of all those connections I make with various RSS feeds etc.

I guess there is a certain erosion of priorities when we behave in this distracted fashion. Clearly, there is a cost that we all pay and there is also a loss of productivity due to this distracted behavior. What Maggie’s points is that we seem to be building towards a culture of distraction and there was a word for it that I remember from way back when: MTV generation and their short attention span. Then came that most useful of phrase: multi-tasking. You were considered a paragon of sorts if you could juggle various tasks. Of course out of that grew this whole notion of “Time Management.” And then came the interruptive and disruptive Internet and Web 2.0, mobile phones, iPhone etc.etc and now there is no dearth of distraction. I guess we all are deep down probably looking for a break and to disconnect. I know I have taken a small step by switching off my cell phone for extended periods of time and asking folks to contact me on Skype or via email. And that has been a huge bonus for me since I am able to eek some time for myself and try to focus on what is really important. Quality or quantity?

If you don’t get to read the book you might want to take a quick look at 10 ways To Quell Distraction by Maggie.

Technorati Tags: distracted,maggie johnson,internet culture,internet,technology,ideas,life