[Super74]

So the only answer to controlling ourselves is to hobble our equipment? I totally disagree. That's like saying the only way to quit drinking is to lock yourself in a room with no alcohol. Eventually you have to come out and face your problem. But I think it is more than a self control issue.

It's the bottleneck that forces us to make choices as to what we are doing at any given time and keeps us opening and closing applications or minimizing screens to fill the single desktop real estate.

Hardware needs to adapt to the amount of information out there and it hasn't. The single monitor desktop environment is 30 years old. Break that bottleneck and you will have more information under your control at any given time.

[count]

Kind of ironic you chose quitting alcohol as your comparison - locking people in a room is exactly what many high-intensity anti-alcoholism/drug abuse programs do. You stay in there with nothing but food, water, and maybe some books until you've gotten through the cold sweats, the puking, and the other associated symptoms of withdrawal. Once your body has returned to a semblance of normalcy, you start treating the psychological addition issues - which is virtually impossible while drunk/high or while 'coming down'. So a period of cold turkey pain is some times necessary.

I don't know if that's the 'best' way to handle it (I'm not an addiction specialist, I just have many addicts in my family - 2 of which have gone through similar programs), but it is certainly effective. Both of the family members who went through such programs have been clean for >20 years afterward, after 15-20 years of abuse.

[Super74]

You countered with "So a period of cold turkey pain is some times necessary."

How does that apply to turning off your services? Doe one then seek counseling before turning them back on? Or in the case of the alcoholic, never turning them on again? Goodbye Twitter!

Maybe I made a bad analogy, my point was that information overload is more a general problem than addiction, another topic altogether. But in both cases, you still have to face your problem. Cold turnkey is only a temporary solution.

Avoiding distractions is not a physical addiction that one needs to go "cold turkey" with. If so, the user has bigger problems than information overload. Game addicts would fall into that category, not those following Twitter or any other real-time media.

I use several monitors and have dedicated my social media to only one of them and I removed the audible alerts which I never liked anyway. My work area always remains on the center monitor, whether I am reading an article, writing a proposal or the like. When I need to stop and catch up on my real-time media, it is always there to my left. I don't need to re-open any apps or log back into any services or un-hobble my network. That alone would take more time from my schedule than a little self control.

If we are talking about addicts, then this is another discussion altogether.

[count]

I don't disagree with you at all, and you raise a number of good points. I thought we were talking about addicts though - which is why I took it where I did.

[wvenable]

> So the only answer to controlling ourselves is to hobble our equipment? I totally disagree.

A certain amount of muscle memory is the problem. I can open distracting sites without even thinking about it. I use the LeechBlock plugin for Firefox to block out distracting sites when I really need to get something done. For the first little while, I open the sites automatically (which, of course, doesn't work). Eventually my brain gets temporarily retrained and I don't do it as much.

Bottleneck isn't really the issue (I have big dual-monitors, for example). No matter how much screen space you have, you can only look at one thing at a time. It takes your attention to read hacker news, for example.

[Super74]

Avoiding distractions is not a physical addiction that one needs to go "cold turkey" with. If so, the user has bigger problems than information overload. Game addicts would fall into that category, not those following Twitter or any other real-time media.

Widening the bottleneck allows one to view, arrange and process more information. I bet you are using both monitors directly in front of you, as one large display. That's a bottleneck as well. Try putting another to your right or left and filter certain information to it. Worked wonders for me.

Controlling what your fingers do, is another matter.I am in total control of my body when using the computer.

Sounds like you might have an addiction.

[wvenable]

> Sounds like you might have an addiction.

Isn't that what we're talking about here?