Are You Powerless to the Web?

The Wall Street Journal tries to understand what makes the web so addictive, suggesting through studies done by neuroscientist Irving Biederman that our attraction to the internet may be evolutionary.

It is something we seem hard-wired to do, says Dr. Biederman. When you find new information, you get an opioid hit (the brain’s pleasure-enhancing neurotransmitters), and we are junkies for those. You might call us ‘infovores.’ “

Biederman goes on to discuss how, like with food, we’re hard-wired for scarcity, so we don’t have a good sense of limits in the face of an abundance of information. This addiction, as most of us know firsthand, can be a real productivity killer, which requires us to employ self-control when we hit the web. So what do you think? Are you powerless to the web? Share your thoughts in the comments.