In his new book, “iBrain: Surviving the Technological Alteration of the Modern Mind,” Dr Small is of the view that the more we plough through screeds of irrelevant data trying to find gems of useful information through our Google searching etc, the better our brains become at, to quote Malcolm Gladwell’s excellent ‘Blink’, Thin Slicing… or making snap judgments.

I saw an excellent presentation by David Hawdale of Hawdale Associates a couple of years ago where he discussed the way the brain processes information in a ridiculously quick fashion when faced with an array of affiliate marketing, shopping comparison or other ‘hijack’ results when looking for actual things. Apparantly we make a decision in less than 2 seconds on a typical Google results page.

Now if only the web would smarten up itself and find me relevant listings for when and where I actually am, I could go back to my normal vegetative state and not have to ferret out what I am really after…

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