Numerous times in the Boidem, and in various other frameworks as well, I've alluded to the constantly nagging feeling that though we're presently immersed in something interesting, there's something more interesting, more worthwhile, lurking just around the corner. Because of this we keep our eyes and ears open for that other thing, and devote only limited attention to what we're doing. I refer to this as the cocktail party metaphor, and I first wrote about it in an examination of Linda Stone's concept of continuous partial attention.

And because I have a tendency in these columns to repeat myself, two years after that, once again when referring to Linda Stone, I gave a slightly different, but very similar, take on it.

In this particular case, however, it may be that we're in a reverse cocktail party mode. Instead of being on the lookout for something more interesting to latch onto, we've already resigned ourselves to the fact that whatever we latch on to next is going to at best be distressingly similar to what we now have. Madrigal suggests that the stream has crested because we can't keep up the pace, but perhaps it's simpler than that. Perhaps its cresting (if that's really the case) because we've realized that, unlike the Talking Heads who are on a road, those of us in the stream are on a treadmill, to nowhere.