Scientists say ...

Yup, they do, yet again. No doubt other scientists will be saying the exact opposite six minutes from now

Anyway, here is the thing they are saying this time:

Scientists say juggling e-mail, phone calls and other incoming information can change how people think and behave. They say our ability to focus is being undermined by bursts of information. 

That's from the New York Times (H/T The Gypsy Scholar).

What's so interesting about it? Well, it's exactly what Harold Innis predicted. What, you've never heard of Innis. Well, you have heard of the guy who stole the idea from him, Marshall McLuhan. In fact, the idea he stole, that media changes the way we think and behave because it changes the way we connect ideas is the only worthwhile thing in McLuhan.

Innis thought it was a very bad thing that our culture was moving away from the sort of linear, logically connected thought that comes from media dominated by written prose to one dominated by television. Innis feared that the Protestant culture that he believed had made the world a better place would fade along with the printing press that had made it possible. McLuhan believed Innis was right about what was going to happen but that this would  be a good thing and not a bad thing because something even better would come of it.

Permit me to arrogantly suggest that what is really bothering the scientists and others who produce articles like the ones above is that by changing the way our minds organize ideas, the Internet will now destroy the kind of liberalism that arose in the 1960s. It seems to me that someone could probably get quite famous and rich right now by pulling McLuhan's trick again. That is to say, yup, the Internet is the death of 1960s liberalism culture only that is a very good thing because it will be replaced with something even better.