I’ve been spending a lot of time recently thinking about how the media affects the way we think. I’ve been writing a bit about The Ad and the Ego. It is a great film about how advertising shapes our thinking in terms of telling us who we should be, or at least who the advertisers want us to be.

Yet there is more to it than explicit messages about what we should buy and the implicit messages about how we should view ourselves. The pace of advertisements has changed over the years. Years ago, advertisements were often 60 seconds long, and sometimes longer. They were more ponderous. Now, the ten second spots through the longer thirty second spots throw as much information at us as quickly as possible, before we click our remote to mute the audio or to change channels. Is this rapid-fire information changing the way we think? Is the medium the message?

I’ve thought more about this based on a blog post by Chris, whom I met last week when I visited Colin McEnroe’s Blogging Class. Chris wrote, Aldon's mind seemed to work very much like the web... He seems to have adapted his thinking patterns to the online world in which he is immersed.”

I’ve often wondered how much does the times makes the man and how much does the man makes the times. Perhaps the same applies to the relationship of media to media consumer. Do I hop from hyperlinked thought to hyperlinked thought because of how much time I spend online, or do I spend as much time online, because I’ve always hopped from thought to thought.

I’ve heard people claim that the television viewership by children is increasing cases of ADHD. Yet on the other hand, I’ve often heard it suggested that the increase in ADHD diagnoses is because of increased testing. When I was young, one of my nicknames was ‘fiddle fingers’. I was always fiddling with something. Later on in life, before I started spending a lot of time online, I was well known for tossing out a ‘collection of thoughts’ in any discussion I was part of and I would take notes at meetings, not to remember what was said, but just to keep track of all of the thoughts that would tumble out of my head so that I could get them in when I got a chance to speak. Have I gravitated to hyperlinked organization simply because that is how my mind worked in the first place?

I suspect that there is a little bit of both in there. This isn’t a new question. The events at West Nickel Mines, PA a couple weeks ago have really got me thinking about this. One of these days, I’ll write my great blog entry about this, but for the time being let me toss out a few thoughts. The Amish have always sought to separate themselves from the world around them. I’ve always thought of it in terms of Romans 12:2 “Don't be conformed to this world…” You look at advertising, you look at blogs, and you have to wonder how much our modern media is conforming us to the world.

Yet that is only the first part of the quote. The scripture goes on to say, “…but be transformed by the renewing of your mind”. Blogs, and all of the new media that is growing up around the Internet provides an opportunity to transformation, and that is an important part of why I am online.

So, whether the way we think is molded by the media around us, or we can mold the media around us by our thinking, blogs and other emerging media provides a great opportunity for transformation, and perhaps we all need to think more about our role in such transformations.