For all of you Facebook users

In today's class we read the New Atlantis article The Myth of Multitasking and looked at the negative impacts that can result from overloading ourselves with too much information. Beyond short term impacts like lost productivity and increased stress there were long term health effects including an involuntary rewiring of our brains.

Well, the New York times has followed up with another related article about the Facebook newsfeed feature and how it was initially unpopular but then became one of the most popular parts of the site. It all has to do with something called 'ambient awareness' which is similar to the 'acquired inattention' that our article in class mentioned. It is a way of getting constant updates about the people around you, digitally or otherwise. In other words it creates a constant flow of information. It also draws a very clear distinction between younger people like yourselves and those of my gnenration.

It brings us back to the point about our brains being wired differently because of what we are exposed to. Have you been made into a biologically and psychologically different kind of human because of too much input? I don't know but from my own experience it would seem so. More and more there are outside studies which confirm it.