For all the value it brings to our lives, technology is amazing in its ability to distract us. We just can't give complete attention to anything or anyone-work, driving, conversations, friends and family-when that email arrives with a "ding" in our computer mailbox or pops up on our ubiquitous Blackberry.

But emails aren't our only distraction. Our attention has been eroded to an alarming degree by the fact that we live in a hypermobile, hyperconnected society, says Maggie Jackson author of Distracted: The Erosion of Attention and the Coming Dark Age. She writes: "We can tap into 50 million Web sites. 1.8 million books in print, 75 million blogs, and other snowstorms of information, but we increasingly seek knowledge in Google searches and Yahoo! Headlines that we gulp on the run while juggling other tasks."