About a week after I wrote on Internet Multitasking Syndrome, PBS’s MediaShift columnist Mark Glaser posed a question to MediaShift readers about converged devices, and more recently whether paid attention to anything anymore.
In his follow up post Mark asked if he could use the photo montage for my new Web site, which he titled "Five Shades of David Cohn." (I wonder if that will now come up in a Google image search?)
I have always framed this problem as being some form of Attention
Deficit Disorder (ADD), but New York freelance writer and thinker David
Cohn recently dubbed the problemInternet Multitasking Syndrome, with the handy IMS acronym. His focus was solely on the Internet, and how hyperlinks invite us to jump around like gnats from site to site.
I’ve met Mark once and can genuinely say he is a nice and intelligent guy. But I’m bummed about one thing. As a child I always dreamed about being in PBS with a bunch of fury animated creatures that would help me learn to spell. Or at least that guy from A Reading Rainbow. I mean, Glaser bares a little resemblance to Beaker from the Muppets, but it’s just not the same.
Update: Also re-blogged at CBS’s Public Eye blog.