"When online, how often do you control your own focus--and how frequently do you allow it to be captured by peripheral stimuli?" (42). And what is that stimuli?

As for me personally, when I go online I typically go with some sort of goal. While this goal covers everything from researching targeted information to traversing the "digital treadmill" (13), I will very rarely not accomplish said goal. Peripheral stimuli such as social media and the "always on mentality" (50) do not affect me in the way that Rheingold describes. I will typically indulge in entertainment or social media when I reach a block in writing, or something else urgently needs my attention. Even as I write this, small notifications are popping up intermittently. These will and have however been ignored until the point in time where I reached a satisfactory answer to this question, or the point in time where I reach a mental block in about how I go answering this question. I feel like Rheingold's usage of the "cocktail party effect" (42) is quite accurate, as while I do have Facebook open on my second screen and even a podcast running, I still feel that I am quite focused on the task at hand (i.e. this assignment). So in review, while there are many online peripheral stimuli that exist e.g. social media sites, regular media sites, and the fact that a literal stockpile of knowledge is at my fingertips (as well as numerous cat photos), I myself can remain focused on my current task. This is of course with the exception of when my goal is to log on to traverse the "digital treadmill" or to kill time.

What is "infotention," and why is it important to Rheingold?

Infotention is a word that Rheingold came up with to describe the various factors that one needs to navigate the web, more specifically the ability to use both mental attention skills and search engine usage in tandem to better stay focused while researching information. The word itself is most likely a combination of the words 'information' and 'attention'. The internet contains a vast wealth of information, so much in fact that even when looking up information on a relevant topic the information found may be rendered moot as it may be too specific, information found may chain to similar information which chains to other information (becoming a misconstrued game of telephone), or the information that one finds may be sufficient enough to answer the question at hand but the person still chooses to research more information. Rheingold himself had experience with all of the scenarios himself when researching information about how Nikola Tesla's push for AC current lost out against Thomas Edison's push for DC power (90). While researching he was quickly able to gather information that was more than enough to answer his question, but chose to keep reading and clicking on links long after passing this point. However at some point he remembered that he had blog post to write that he stopped researching. If it weren't for his "infotention" he may have forgotten that he had something to do, albeit in this specific case it may or may not have mattered too much.

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