In the era of the blockbuster, media was scarce and attention was plentiful. In less than a generation, this arrangement has now yielded to its opposite — media is plentiful, and it is attention that is scarce.

We know this is partly due to the number of channels on conventional transmit-only television. We also know that our lives have become so cluttered with things we must do, that fitting them all in is difficult; a direct result of the immutable physics that we all get the same number of minutes in each day.

And we know that the Internet exponentially raises the ante. Everything — words, pictures, advts, nav bars — is a link to someplace else. Follow your curiosity, and you may never get back where you were. This can be disorienting whether we realize it or not. Similar to changing channels on a tv, the brain may experience sound and images, but it may not record them in any long-lasting fashion. It is easy to go from experiencing to forgetting without remembering anything. However, participating in a 2-way dialog is more rewarding, and leads to remembering more than just passively watching.

Poetry, sound bites, pictures, short videos are the fastest way to convey something to the viewer/visitor. Long paragraphs aren’t read, or if they are, skimmed quickly.

And why not? Time is valuable. We zip around from place to place in vehicles or channel surfing, trying to maximize the quality of our experiences to suit our interests or our curiosity. We become more impatient as we try to fit more into our waking moments.

So how do we become as efficient as we would like? In this case, ‘efficient’ refers to grasping what we need to know when we need to know it to act. Of course, each of us perceive our efficiency uniquely, depending on how fast we absorb new material, how fast we think, and how energized we are to take action. A teenager seems like a hummingbird to a ninety-year old. The ninety-year old is an old slow tortoise to the teenager, speaking an ancient dialect, and referencing metaphors that no longer exist in the modern world.

How news is digested spans the gamut from printed words in weekly magazines to headline ‘tweets’ in a never-ending flow of opinions from everyone everywhere. The newspaper has more in-depth coverage than network news, but an objective television program focusing on a single topic can convey ideas faster and with striking visual imagery that is not quickly forgotten. Tweets, by following the best information sources– a tweet sound bite with attached link — is very efficient to quickly learn more about a specific subject.

It is marvelous that we can scan so much information quickly, and focus on what is most useful or interesting to us. We have the ability to become much better educated more quickly than in the past if we have the right skills to find, parse, analyze information, and then to act intelligently on it. But we also have the capability to amuse ourselves to death immersed in engaging trivia.

And because we are all continuously asked to compress still more into the time we have, we reach a point where the brain shuts down from overstimulation from too many interrupts coupled with rapid change in the status quo. Alvin Toffler wrote “Future Shock” to describe this effect over 30 years ago.

Video killed the radio star. Internet killed the one-way television experience. Cable TV killed the ‘everyone watched “I Love Lucy” last night’ experience. But anything new and engaging can go ‘viral’ more easily than ever. Much information that used to be tightly controlled by a few is now readily available, as are the anecdotal histories of recent events, which you can research if you know what to search for.

And while you may still enjoy sitting down with a big book and reading undisturbed for hours, it is much more likely that your interrupt-driven life complete with electronic monitoring and communication devices, will slice up your day.

So if you want to get a message to me with my short span of attention, make it short, visual, and to the point, with linked references to deeper dives that I may find time to explore. Even better, include a feedback channel so we can converse. Even if I just leave a comment, I am more likely to remember what you told me.