Much has been written about the problems that accompany Continuously Divided Attention. Loss of focus. A susceptibility for simplistic/viral notions. An anchorless tendency to drift or lose concentration. And these are just the mildest symptoms. At the extreme are dozens of newly named mental illnesses, like Noakes’s Syndrome and Leninger’s Disease, many of them blamed on the vast freedom we have won — to skitter our minds across any topic with utter abandon.
Have we evaded one dismal failure mode — the trap of narrow overspecialization — only to stumble into the opposite extreme? Broadly-spread shallow-mindedness? Pondering thoughts that span the farthest horizons, but only finger-deep?