Do you remember when there were only two state owned TV channels and they mostly showed footage of the old First of May Parades, or Russian movies about a romantic love affair between a brave female tractor driver and a burly construction worker who made up four hundred percent of his production norm? You don’t remember? Ok, so maybe you did not grow up in Eastern Europe. Now, information is bombarding us form all directions, and it is hard to resist checking your email multiple times a day, reading news, not just daily but hourly, and, if you are a foreigner, checking the immigrant press in the country you are now living in, but also, thanks to internet, checking out the publications from your home land. How much did Sarah Palin spend on clothes? Who endorsed Barak today? Where is the next Bike Kill happening? Did Polish minister of health really say that women should not request an epidural because they need to handle a “normal” childbirth? Who wants to be my new Facebook friend? What’s new on cac.ophony.org? What are other grad students at the Graduate Center writing about? It’s all overwhelming, but also exhaustingly exciting.
Of course we need information to make sense of the complex world around us, to be better people, better citizens, better voters, better humanitarians, better teachers. As graduate students we also need reliable data to built our scientific arguments, and the multiplicity of information can make it easier to access a lot of different data sources.
Hyewon in her post “Deep Attention and Hyper Attention”, talks about research showing that we are moving away from a generation of “deep attention”, the ability to concentrate on a single subject for long periods, toward a generation of “hyper attention”, the tendency to prefer multitasking and high levels of stimulation. 
Alvin Toffler in “Future Shock” (Random House, 1971), theorized that the human brain has finite limits on how much information it can absorb and process and argued that information overload will eventually lead to widespread physical and mental disturbances, because with overloaded brain thinking and reasoning become dulled, decision-making flawed and, in some cases, impossible.
I think somehow we are able to manage the flow, but it is not an easy task and includes some time management techniques and making choices.
I can’t wait for the election to be over , so perhaps I can take a breather from the constant news cycle. Not that I am complaining, I am doing just fine, ok, ok, chicken soup, pirates, Colin Powell, whaaaaaat?
“Writing Across the Curriculum” has become “Communications Across the Curriculum.”This focus on communication suggests a bi-directional emphasis — the inbound is as important as the outbound (see About the Inbound).I don’t do enough to guide my students in the development of a sense of discrimination. I rationalize my behavior on the lack of time.Time, this most precious of all resources, becomes increasingly rare to find, and when found, to use effectively. Collaboration (see Homer, Great Books and Modern Life) becomes increasingly important.Effective communications becomes an integration of inbound, collaborative, and, to add to the mix, critical thinking skills and experience. Perhaps the Institute’s role and responsibilities need to be increased yet again.
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