"When a man is tired of the internet, he is tired of life ..." That's what Dr Johnson would have told his mate Boswell if he'd had a Twitter account in the 18th century.
Back then he was talking about the intellectual attractions of the great metropolis ( "for there is in London all that life can afford"). You might say the same about the internet these days. Rather like the universe, it appears to be continually expanding, and is now so big that there are whole galaxies of sites that nobody could hope to visit in a lifetime.
Even in a relatively small niche of the web such as medicine there is a huge range of online content: medical blogs, online news and magazine sites, journals, online education and college websites, bulletin boards, image collections and much more. Not to mention all the social networking functions. OK, much of it rubbish, but there are also many useful gems to be found out there.
So how do you manage all this information? Even the most avid internet addict can only visit so many sites in one day, and even then they risk information overload.
If you're like me you probably have a few sites bookmarked on your 'favourites' tab that effectively become your internet 'neighbourhood' as you drop in on them on a regular basis.
But the beauty and the curse of the internet is that there is so much out there to tempt you - and so many new sites coming online all the time that you have to draw a line in the sand and ask - 'is this really worthy of becoming a favourite?'
Today, for example, I have added the Australian Science Media Centre's blog page (www.aussmc.org/ScienceBlog.php) after reading an interesting article on swine flu vaccination. Like other favourites, I'll give it a trial run but drop it if it fails to deliver consistently.
The other way of keeping internet content in manageable proportions is via aggregator websites that pick and choose the best bits for you. Specialist sites such as Heartwire do this very well for niche areas like cardiology, but it's harder to do this for general practice, which by definition encompasses pretty much the whole human condition. Individuals such as NHSBlogdoc (nhsblogdoc.blogspot.com) cover a lot of primary care issues, but it is very UK-biased.
Here at 6minutes we try draw together a wide selection of medical links, but like painting the Harbour Bridge, it's a never ending task.
I'd be interested to hear how you manage your internet information overload.
