Not by the web alone.

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This is not only true, of course, about our web surfing habits. I sometimes discover, over a period of a number of weeks, that we've become habitual viewers of a particular television series. When we would sit down to watch a series the first or second time, the very act of sitting down and stopping what we'd been doing was a breaking from habit. After a few weeks of watching, however, we'd discover that doing this had turned into an essential part of our routine. It's not only a case of getting caught up in something, but of suddenly discovering that we've organized ourselves around something that until recently had no meaning for us, nor any hold on us.

Watching television, of course, demands a change of venue - in my case, from the computer to the living room. In that sense, choosing to watch a particular series becomes almost a statement. With the web, all that's really changing is a series of clicks. Instead of clicking on a site I'm very used to visiting, I'll click somewhere else, intending to click to that other, familiar, site soon. Except that "soon" seems never to arrive, and after a couple of weeks of this happening, a new routine has established itself.

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Go to: An unavoidable, and constant, change of focus, or
Go to: Now. Right now!