Attention deficit

I've been worried about informational overload and generally feeling distracted lately, as might be obvious from the divergent topics of this blog (which is of course a highly filtered version of even more numerous topics flitting around my brain like meth-addicted butterflies). Not a new problem, and I was amused to learn that Herb Simon anticipated it in 1971:

"What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients. Hence a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention, and a need to allocate that attention efficiently among the overabundance of information sources that might consume it.''
-- Herbert Simon

Let me change the problem a little bit. Forget "attention", which is fleeting at best. I can give my short-term attention to CNN or a blog but whether or not I absorb any long-term knowledge or value from the act of attending is a different matter. Let's think about knowledge, whatever that is.

There are two kinds of knowledge: the stuff in my head, and the stuff outside. The latter category is growing at an absurd pace, while the stuff inside is growing at a snail's pace (or possibly shrinking). There is an impedance mismatch between these two worlds; transferring stuff in or out of the head is laborious and there is no technological fix in sight.

The network and the web browser and the search engine gives you "access" to all the world's knowledge, but that's not the same thing as knowing everything. What would that even mean? Too much knowledge is bad for you -- some of Borges' stories address this: The Aleph and Funes the Memorious, and of course The Library of Babel are all about the dangers of having too much information too close to hand. Unless you have an exceptional mind, you always have to trade off depth and breadth of knowledge. Knowing everything means knowing nothing very well.

Managing attention is only part of the general area of managing the relationship between what you know and what you know how to find out. The trick of the googlectual of the future is to have the skills for gathering just-in-time knowledge in a flexible yet rigorous way, and applying it when needed, and then, presumably, forgetting it but keeping a pointer to where to find it again.

Leaders

I've had CNN on in the background most of the last few days. Yesterday, there briefly appeared the mayor of San Antonio, Phil Hardberger. He impressed me: with a dignified bearing, he expressed sympathy for the victims of the flood and welcomed them to his city. I'm not sure why but I had a very immediate and positive reaction to this Texas politician, as opposed to a certain other one who serves as preznit.

Bush is a mystery to me. Everything about him screams "small man". His incompetence, not just in real matters (like funding disaster relief) but in the symbolic role of leader. Strumming a guitar while a city is destroyed? He's been compared to Nero, but he doesn't have the stature for that. He's just a boob. But how did such a boob get elected president, twice? Is boobdome really so appealing for such a large swathe of the country? Well, yes, sorry, that's a stupid question.

Oh well, I think his time just passed. It may have taken the destruction of a major American city and the loss of thousands of American lives, but I think people will start to wake up. When even Peggy Noonan starts to question, ever so slightly, the competence of a Republican president, you know something has shifted in the great quivering American collective consciousness.