Vannevar Bush predicts how I spent my post-lunchtime. A mention during lunch of Wittgenstein lead me to read about Bertrand Russell which in turn led to analytic philosophy and logical positivism (no I didn’t succumb to Hegel’s side of things, too). Instead I got caught up in John Searle and found this great talk that he wrote to the American Philosophical Association entitled “Is the Brain a Digital Computer”. If this isn’t a memex trail then I don’t know what is =).
On re-read: hmmm, that’s really scatterbrained. I guess this is intellectual-attention-deficit-disorder (IADD?).’
Update: a better name for it is Nerd Attention Deficit Disorder. This totally fits. But, the question it begs is: does the environment attract people who are so intellectually fickle, or does it make them intellectually fickle? And if it makes us fickle, is it something that shapes us permanently, or does the UI just force a temporary fickleness upon us so that we can get the most content that the medium offers?