Overcommunication!

It just now hit me, as I sit in the computer lab of Middleton library, where I have been for several hours, somewhat successfully studying Cost Accounting.

All these graphs and charts of highly-aggregated information on powerpoint slides. My cellphone starts ringing. I look a row of computers over and the girl there is checking facebook to see recent pictures of her friends. No, wait, now she's looking down at her iPod to change the artist. Now she looks back at her screen, satisfied with the new sonic input assaulting her eardrums to browse a little more facebook, and now...she brings up a powerpoint slide on some sort of science she is studying. I look at my screen and have several webpages open...e-mail, facebook, cost accouting powerpoint slides, blogger...My recently used calculator sits next to my recently used mobile phone. The keyboard is on top of my textbook, which is next to my notebook, which is across from my booksack, which is above my folder.

Overcommunication! Is it any wonder we're tired and stressed out, when we make our brains responsible for so much information during our lifetimes?! It makes me wonder how they did research and education without the internet. How did they do it? Not having at one's fingertips a vast array of articles, charts and graphs, textbook websites, self-help websites, and online encyclopedia on how to track equivalent units in a cost system? I guess they just thoroughly researched something. One thing at a time. They didn't have to worry about their friend calling the mobile, or sending a text, or checking e-mail, or knowing several online files' worth of information. My brain is overloaded! Need! To! Specialize!