Sam Anderson has a wonderful article in New York Magazine that examines our modern culture of multi-tasking. He explores both sides of the attention spectrum from continuous partial attention to executive focus, and concludes that maybe all this distraction we’re experiencing is not all that bad. It’s a long (by internet standards) but worthwhile read.
Anderson on the benefits of distraction:
The prophets of total attentional meltdown sometimes invoke, as an example of the great culture we’re going to lose as we succumb to e-thinking, the canonical French juggernaut Marcel Proust. And indeed, at seven volumes, several thousand pages, and 1.5 million [...]

Linda Stone at Gel 2006 from Gel Conference on Vimeo
Writer and consultant Linda Stone, who coined the phrase “continuous partial attention”, shares some thoughts on the effects of pervasive digital technology in a newly released Gel video (above).
Economist Justin Wehr has pulled out some salient quotes (from Via founder Dee Hock) that Stone uses in the presentation:
Noise becomes data when it has a cognitive pattern.
Data becomes information when it’s assembled into a coherent whole, which can be related to other information.
Information becomes knowledge when it’s integrated with other information in a form useful for making decisions and determining actions.
Knowledge becomes [...]