Dumber? Absolutely.

"Once I was a scuba diver in the sea of words. Now I zip along the surface like
a guy on a Jet Ski. "

I think that dumbness has been stalking me. And this week, I got confirmation that I have been infected with a increasing level of intellectual dullness. And evidently Google is to blame for this sorry state of affairs. I read this article this week and it has really opened my eyes to my own self-imposed attention deficit disorder. My attention span is losing its already slim shadow.

As an experiment yesterday, I sat down with a book with the goal of reading for thirty minutes. I had easy access to my Blackberry, my cell phone, and my laptop computer. I read for about five minutes and then the gravitational pull of "the need to be current" began:

"I wonder if anyone has emailed me?" "Did I check my fantasy football team?" "How far down are my stocks today?" "What did John Piper preach on last week?" "I should really watch some movie previews." "Blog. I have to blog or Aaron Mayfield can't comment."

And I struggled to concentrate for just five minutes on a book that is important to me.

Every January, our family takes a bread from media. No TV. No movies. No talk radio in the car. In the past, this has been a very painful goodbye. But this year, I find that I am looking forward to the media vacation. I feel like maybe I will listen more and learn more. Perhaps even my relationships with flesh and blood people with grow.

Maybe I will be able to read again for longer than just five minutes.

And recover some of the ground that dumbness has taken by force.