Learning to become a better skimmer in the Info Age

You know, this stuff keeps coming back again and again.

People have been actively surfing since the the mid 90s.   Now they're starting to realize that it is adding to the "Short Attention Span Theatre" that we've all come to live with.

First MTV came a long with their flickery treatment on Music Videos.  Everything had to be the Radio Mix, no such thing as the 12 inch or Disco Mix, and people ate it up.   Educational Programming for kids predated that with the Sesame Street treatment of short bursts designed to program the mind for learning.  As a result there seems to be an impatience with the long form of things that started growing. 

I have to wonder if Tolstoy could get War and Peace published today as a result.

Then the web browsers came along with this internet thingy.  People realized that as long as they were connected, one really doesn't need to know just how many isotopes there are of Carbon or just how far north you can grow Durian Fruit. 

You can consult Wikipedia very easily for that sort of thing, and I have included links for that above.

I'm quite guilty of this sort of "knowledge" myself.   I am an IT Manager.  I recommend purchases, software, hardware, and staffing.  I have been asked in the course of one particular day to recommend the purchase of Network Switches, Internet Providers, Collaboration Software, PC Hardware and Software, Security Cameras, Security Camera Recorders, Cable both Network and Video and so on.  

That is also done on two major operating system families as well as their server variants and workstations.

How on Earth do you keep all that in your head?  You don't... or rather you don't particularly need to thanks to the web.  While someone of a generation before me would think that is sloppy, after all you do really need to figure out how to do Calculus in your head and paper in daily life, Don't You?, I've come to realize that it is more important to know how to get the answer not the process.  

That is why you have the Web, Superiors, Peers, and Subordinates in the Workplace, and Blogs as well as other things.

I guess I'll just go with the flow and try to be more flexible.   How about you?

Now where was I going with this... I'll start launching Firefox now....