How Summly Will Cause The Zombie Apocalypse

Research has demonstrated gamers, social media users, tv addicts and zombies have the attention span of a gold fish.

The cause is continuous exposure to information in tiny snippets. Yes, exactly like what you are reading now.

In pre-literate times, Celtic, Gaelic and Norse bards, and the poet-singers of other oral traditions could remember and recite epic tales from memory, many the equivalent of hundreds of pages.

Summly is an application that uses algorithms to automatically reduce pages of text to a few paragraphs suitable for display on mobile devices. While this may seem convenient in an age of extreme information overload, is the loss of detail, the reduction of knowledge to very easily digested spoonfuls of soup, going to reduce brain activity to a misfiring mass of disconnected detail, and thus the zombification of the connected world?

Well so what? You may ask. The rapid exposure of multiple bites of information may cause a loss of concentration and attention, on the plus side, it will result in the awesome, computer-like ability to multi-multi-task.

No, sorry, it doesn’t work like that. Your thoughts will be an unfocused mish mash buzzing with random, fractured notions. A craving for brains is sure to follow.

Is there a cure? Read a book. That’s a rectangular block of sheets of pressed cellulose with words printed in lines…often around 19cm x 13cm and a few cm thick.

gamasutra.com