A new article on Wired titled Digital Overload Is Frying Our Brains is once again making the case that our growing exposure to bite-sized chunks of information, be it from TV, the internet, mobile phones or emails, is impairing our ability to focus and pay attention to a single topic of interest. The article ends on a dark note:

If we forget how to use our powers of deep focus, we’ll depend more on black-and-white thinking, on surface ideas, on surface relationships. That breeds a tremendous potential for tyranny and misunderstanding. The possibility of an attention-deficient future society is very sobering.