Been a while since I've left a mark here, but trust that I've been attentive if not vocal.

You assert that we may be missing the chance to “broaden our horizons” as a result of our ability to focus with laser precision on our target. I can't deny that I've taken advantage of the wonders of Google to provide instantaneous answers to many questions, negating the need for “manual research”. On the flip side, though, it seems to me that as a result of the social web, I now have a cafeteria of “first-hand” options when I need information, whereas I formerly had a very limited and prescribed set of secondary sources (the media, the library, the encyclopedia, etc.) and very few primary sources.

My best to you,
Shannon

Been a while since I've left a mark here, but trust that I've been attentive if not vocal.

You assert that we may be missing the chance to “broaden our horizons” as a result of our ability to focus with laser precision on our target. I can't deny that I've taken advantage of the wonders of Google to provide instantaneous answers to many questions, negating the need for “manual research”. On the flip side, though, it seems to me that as a result of the social web, I now have a cafeteria of “first-hand” options when I need information, whereas I formerly had a very limited and prescribed set of secondary sources (the media, the library, the encyclopedia, etc.) and very few primary sources.

My best to you,
Shannon

I rarely enjoy reading the NY Times anymore as we don't subscribe to it (on paper) and I dislike reading it on my screen or via a RSS reader as I only receive that which I've added based on a filter of some sort. I have fond memories of not thinking I wanted to read the magazine — or even the sports section — as I pulled apart my sunday times, but finding a word on the cover intriguing and only much later would I emerge from my nest to discover that I had infact read — and enjoyed — that section because something unintended interested me. We do receive the Economist and The New Yorker in print and I still read those cover to cover. It's an interesting change in my reading and I have been known to grab the recycling from a neighbor so I can truly READ the Sunday Times and not just see some articles for it.

Does that leave me with an overly broad inflow of information? Or in seeing the vast prairie am I able to better distinguish all the different grasses because I'm not focusing just on Big Blue Stem grass but the land as a whole? I don't know. I do know it marks me as different.