Rebooting My Brain

I can’t believe that whole ridiculous discussion about gatekeepers (in which I was a ridiculous participant) is still at the top of tech.memeorandum. Umair was right:

Ever since I’ve started using [memeorandum] to the point where it replaces many of my other sources, I have gotten stupider.

I can feel it – I don’t think as fast, flexibly, or freely.

This is a well-known phenomenon in psych and econ – I’ve been locking myself into a diet of reinforcing information. Nothing really challenges my beliefs, and so I get hyperpolarized, or echo-chambered, sure – but the deeper effect is that I also get stupid, fast.

I need to reboot my brain — I’m swearing off blogging about blogging, tech.memeorandum and the whole echo chamber thing (at least for a week — that’s step 1 in the 15-step program). I can’t promise I’ll be more insightful as a result, but at least I’ll be talking about something else.

UPDATE
I’m hopping off the wagon long enough to point to this New York Magazine article on The Blog Establishment, which gives a mainstream treatment to all of our navel-gazing.

UPDATE #2
I can’t believe linking to that New York article generated a link to this dopey post on tech.memeorandum — how suitably ironic. But that’s it! Don’t try to tempt me — I’m back on the wagon. Click on Publishing 2.0 in the header above and read my most recent posts (more to come) –> no temptation! Not one drop!