Wandering of the Mind

Consider a walk on the Internet.

I went on Wikipedia to look for information on Fresnel half-period zones. It turned out that the page on Fresnel zone is about something completely different. Clicked on "near field" in the See Also section to see what it is about. I was overwhelmed with wordy descriptions. Scrolling down I started reading the "Analysis" section as the paragraph begins with the words "Maxwell's equation". I stumbled upon "Bessel's function", which was mentioned in my notes but not explained. Click and it was pages after pages of mathematics. WOW. Didn't bother to understand any of it. But Bessel's functions are first defined by Daniel Bernoulli? Lots of things seem to be related to him. Have to see what other things he has accomplished. His page is definitely the most friendly so far, with many familiar names and concepts. Since I'm doing fluid mechanics next term, why not check out it, as he made important contributions.

I shall end it here. Potentially I can go on and on, just clicking on links that catch a glimpse of my attention. Similar things occur on the BBC website and more dangerously Facebook. I say dangerous as it is interactive, and high tendency to stay on for much longer.

A simple "random walk" like this costs me at least half hour before I even realize I am walking. I will continue walking even after that, as it is so addictive. The feeling to getting a reply with a simple click is just enormous. Ever since English was no longer a barrier, I have been just browsing through pages and pages on the Internet. The amount of information I come across also increased, as I begin to get interested in more and more topics. To cope I begin to skimming through the text faster and faster. It has developed into such a daily routine thing that I think my brain has been wired to just skim through things. It's a daily caffeine dosage that it cannot miss. After receiving training in this area, it seems to have lost its function to stay focused on a single article or topic. Now this is a problem.

I can't seem to focus on a very long article or commentary on the newspaper. I find it very hard to read my lecture handout slowly enough to understand the previous sentence before moving on. In less than 30 minutes into any lecture, my mind will wander away. These are all the signs of restlessness. I cannot foresee this problem going away easily, just like addiction.

Internet has brought the world to the computer screen. Everything is just a click away. However, is it going to make us evolve in the reverse way? Has the brain become too used to accepting answers with a click, that it has slowly lost its function to think and analyze?