The Internet promises to have particularly far-reaching
effects on cognition....The Internet, an immeasurably powerful
computing system, is subsuming most of our other intellectual
technologies. It's becoming our map and our clock, our printing press
and our typewriter, our calculator and our telephone, and our radio and
TV.
When the Net absorbs a medium, that medium is recreated in the Net's
image. It injects the medium's content with hyperlinks, blinking ads,
and other digital gewgaws, and it surrounds the content with the
content of other media it has absorbed. A new e-mail message, for
instance, may announce its arrival as we're glancing over the latest
headlines at a newspaper's site. The result is to scatter our attention
and diffuse our concentration.
