I think we have a big problem on our hands. No its not just the price of commodities, or the rate of inflation, or the economy, or the dollar or even any of the following: war, racism, intolerance, starvation, corrupt politics, piracy, LiLo, Brit or Kim Kardashian’s butt pads. No, its not just all of these horrible things. We have another one. [sigh]

Steve Rubel reminds us of the biggest problem (at least in my opinion) facing those of us living in the digital age: Distraction. I’d be lying if I said that I wasn’t distracted enough from another thing I was doing to write this post. And it all started simply by checking the latest news on the Globe and Mail. Let me take you through a quick rundown of how exactly it all went down. I was working quietly away in my cage and suddenly I got the urge to see what was happening outside of the 5 by 5 cell that I call home 8 hours a day. Of course, there are no windows in the office here, so I had to rely on the closest facsimile of a window available, my computer screen (thanks Bill Gates). I surfed to the Globe and I noticed there was an article about Metallica written by Matthew Ingram. Since I recently blogged about Metallica, I decided I needed to check out the latest. Somehow, his blogroll caught my eye and I started following the links, which brought me to Steve Rubel and his post about Distraction… but I digress.

Steve goes on to describe a generational phenomenon that seems to have begun by affecting those falling into the Gen X cohort (that includes me). Its the glut of distractions out there created by social media and communication devices. He argues that while he sees that these people are productive, distraction rules their lives and has become a burden. Brian Oberkirch gets more specific about the details, but for all intents and purposes, he says the same thing. Steve is quick to compliment application ideas like Friendfeed that offer a solution that try to amalgamate all the distractions into one managable format, but I still think its not enough.

I think what the information age has brought us, besides all of the apparent efficiency benefits, is the ability to diverge. Every hyperlink on the internet be it a reference, an advertisement, or simply a information drill-down, is a divergence from the original content. That said, divergence is an important part of problem solving. It allows people to open their minds and explore solutions. But eventually, in order to get something done, you must converge and decide on a path to take to reach a solution. I comb through all of the big tech and social media blogs out there (eg. GigaOM, Techcrunch, Mashable and so on) every day, but I’ve yet to come across a true convergent application or technology that doesn’t qualify as just another distraction. There’s some pretty serious money out there for the person that can come up with that killer app. I’ve got my hands tied up with other things right now, otherwise I’d be on it!