Slowness

Today on my drive home, I heard David Suzuki interviewed on CBC Radio. He made an interesting point about technology and politics: in today's world it is very easy to get on the Internet and find a viewpoint to support whatever you believe in, whether it be intelligent design, anti-global warming, or that "aliens came down from space and raped women to start a species of super-humans". He lamented at how even a show like The Nature of Things has had to appeal with shock and awe in its programming, in order to get noticed in an ever-increasingly noisy "market" of information overload. We've lost our sense of slowness, to engage in long conversations and to contemplate. This is true. In an ever more complex world, how can we cope with the barrage of free market information overload? How can we collaborate in order to solve the impending disasters of our time. Thomas Homer-Dixon is right about the Ingenuity Gap. If we're spending all our energy on getting our voices heard, when do we have time to spend our energy on solving real problems?