openpolitics.com

The Attention-Deficit-Disorder Economy

Technological advances, and the ubiquity of always-on media, may be undermining one of the key psychological prerequisites for economic growth: patience, and the willingness to put off current gratification for future gains.

..Citing Nicholas Carr, the author of “The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains,” Haldane suggests that the experience of reading may have “rewired our minds” to favor deeper thinking and more patient decision-making.

.. ”Just as the printing press may have caused a neurological re-wiring after the fifteenth century, so too may the Internet in the twenty-first. But this time technology’s impact may be less benign.” Rather than promoting thrift and deep thoughts, technology may now be crunching attention spans and accentuating “short-termism,”