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I'm sorry I don't follow you.

I have a fantastically long attention sp...

Oh LOOK! New Transformers!

Seriously though, this isn't just a technological problem, it's an economic and social concern too. We've long been told that computers will save us work or that they will make our jobs easier.

You know, just like e-mail makes it easier to communicate (how much crap is in YOUR inbox), voice mail makes it easier to get in touch with someone (they too are never in when I call back), and on and on. Computers don't save us from work, they merely make us work in different ways. As I'm writing this I'm in the middle of writing a desk schedule, monitoring my e-mail, looking at Twitter, and listening to Pandora. But I choose to do it that way. It gets a little hairy though when something goes down and I report it to IT... but I'm also working the front desk and now I have to help a patron check out, point out the bathroom, monitor the self check outs, repeatedly flip back to my e-mail to see if IT has fixed the problem I reported, answer the phone...

At that point, I have to do it that way. There's no choice involved.

See I don't want to work like that, but we now live in a culture of "do more for less." The real problem is that now that we've learned to do more with less they'd like us to move on to doing everything with nothing. I remember the days when libraries, at least the bigger ones, had people there specifically to answer the phones. Not anymore as we can do that ourselves, can't we?

Point is that yes, my attention span is as shattered as a shotgunned shot glass when I'm at work... but only because that's the burden placed upon me and hundreds of thousands of other library workers nationwide. When I'm not on the job, however, I can concentrate on anything I want for any length of time I want. I can paint, read, compose music, or play video games for hours and I could care less what's happening with my e-mail, or on TV, or in the news.

In other words, it's gotten to the point where concentration on a single thing is something of a luxery.

Some books contain the machinery required to create and sustain universes. Tycho (Jerry Holkins) @ Penny Arcade

I'm now convinced that before the internets and cell phones took over our lives, no one died in car crashes or any other distraction-related incidents, and that cell phones and internets are far more insidious than eating in the car, or playing with the radio while driving, or having screaming kids or loose pets in the back seat.

I'm also convinced that before the internets, all children and teens were known for their amazingly long attention spans and complete dedication to memorizing poems.

And I'm sure now that we're creating a generation of people who don't "connect" or value long term relationships, unlike those crazy hippies and their free love who somehow managed to make it all the way back to traditional relationships.

Please, let's go back to the days of assembly lines, when one person could concentrate on the same minute task for hours, nay years, on end!

Worry over nothing is what's killing us, and probably has been for a long time. Ha! Distraction is distracting people from worrying about real problems! Now that's pretty funny, Horatio.