the internet on Information Overload

To say that our access to information has exploded doesn’t really capture the cataclysmic change. On April 23, 2005, the very first video was uploaded to YouTube. Now “more video is uploaded to YouTub...

From the dawn of civilization to 2003, five exabytes of data were created. The same amount was created in the last two days.

Sometime in 2007, a serpent of doubt slithered into my info paradise. I began to notice that the Net was exerting a much stronger and broader influence over me than my old stand-alone PC ever had. It ...

Gathering information without processing and applying it is counter to how the mind works and how the brain is structured and has a deleterious effect on our mental and physical well-being, creating a...

Socially, the Internet offers us streams of fragmented information that must be quickly browsed as they pass.

The Internet is designed to encourage us to browse information, not to slowly read and digest it.

Getting information off the Internet is like taking a drink from a fire hydrant.

The biggest impediment to concentration is your computer's ecosystem of interruption technologies: IM, email alerts, RSS alerts, Skype rings, etc. Anything that requires you to wait for a response...

Most of the proprietors of the commercial Internet have a financial stake in collecting the crumbs of data we leave behind as we flit from link to link—the more crumbs, the better. The last thing thes...

I spend so much time on the Internet...I feel like I'm a million pages into the worst book ever, and I'm never going to stop reading.

Addiction isn’t just measured in time spent connected to screens but also in how it dulls our spiritual sensibilities. We use social media to blunt the edges of overwhelm, to find something to thrill ...

The digital age’s technological advancements boast three major contributions to the improvement of human experience, which in turn have become its undeniable values: We have access to what we want wh...

Tony Reinke does a great job capturing the deep ambivalence many of us feel about our smartphones in this short excerpt: This blasted smartphone! Pesk of productivity. Tenfold plague of beeps and ...

In October 2014 Wired magazine reported on the dirty work every social media company must somehow handle: moderating the deluge of exploitative, degrading content posted in unimaginable quantities aro...

The good news is, you’re always connected to the office. The bad news is, you’re always connected to the office.

Leisure has changed significantly since the dawn of the internet age. A 2008 international survey of 27,500 adults between the ages of 18 and fifty-five found that people spend 30% of their leisure ti...

Leisure has changed significantly since the dawn of the internet age. A 2008 international survey of 27,500 adults between the ages of 18 and fifty-five found that people spend 30% of their leisure ti...

We’re little children wandering the aisles of the internet because we’ve lost the presence of our loving parent. We are desperate for the attention of a good Father who sees us. We have no idea how to...

Internet users, that blue screen of death you were looking at this morning? That's the sky. If you're still confused, look it up on Wikipedia tomorrow.

Video is now everywhere. Whatever happens in front of any other Wi-Fi-connected digital camera in the world can be mediated to us and to our vision. Amateur video is pouring into public platforms ever...

Gen Z became the first generation in history to go through puberty with a portal in their pockets that called them away from the people nearby and into an alternative universe that was exciting, addic...

Recently a professor shared with me a college student’s reflections in response to my earlier writings on solitude and silence:  I was not born into a world relatively unaffected by technology lik...

People began to learn, first from the telegraph, then from radio, newsreels, television, and the Internet, that what was happening now, all over the globe, mattered more than what was happening here.

A YouTube video from the Today Show in 1994 shows Bryant Gumbel and Katie Couric asking each other “What is the Internet?” and debating if the “@” symbol means “at” or “about.” The world is very diffe...

We’re little children wandering the aisles of the internet because we’ve lost the presence of our loving parent. We are desperate for the attention of a good Father who sees us. We have no idea how to...

Perhaps we look to a screen because it’s too painful to remember we are mortal. To sit in our limits and let them wash over us. To embrace this body, this moment in time, this feeling, or this place. ...

What, exactly, is the internet? Basically it is a global network exchanging digitized data in such a way that any computer, anywhere, that is equipped with a device called a 'modem', can make ...

Culture is shaped by the primary medium of an era. Marshall McLuhan is widely known as the father of media studies. He coined the famous phrase “the medium is the message” in 1965. And while some to...

Without the internet, we wouldn’t expect instant gratification as often as we do. Not just the ability to get online answers immediately, or same day delivery. Because of the internet, the anticipatio...

People can say one thing and do something totally different. You see the darkness that is often hidden from polite society. The thing that you see is a widespread insecurity. I think people put on a f...