Wired Magazine interviews Bart Kosko, author of Noise:

Adding small amounts of electrical noise helps a nanotube antenna detect faint binary signals. And noise can help digital photographers, tooNoise – injecting a little bit of random pixel noise can allow you to see hidden details in an overexposed image.

The more you can concentrate with background noise, the more it strengthens the brain. Isaac Asimov used to set his typewriter up in stores and other loud places to work. His claim was that you get really good at writing when you’re in a crowd. You want to be energized by that background noise, rather than distracted.
[Wired: Link]

Via Boing Boing

I’m reminded of this passage from The Shockwave RiderThe Shockwave Rider - John Brunner by John Brunner:

Few of us are equipped to cope with the complexity and dazzling variety of twenty-first-century existence. We prefer to identify with small, easily isolable fractions of the total culture. But just as some people can handle only a restricted range of stimuli, and prefer to head for a mountain commune … or even emigrate to an undeveloped country, so some correspondingly require strong stimuli to provoke them into functioning at optimum.

An astute observation. Unfortunately, it’s a preamble to government interrogator Paul T. Freeman’s main argument — namely that smart people such as himself should run society at large.

Brunner observer, in the book’s Acknowledgement, that Shockwave Rider “derives in large part from Alvin Toffler’s stimulating study Future Shock“.

For the dark side, see information overload.

I think Mister Spock put it well when he said: “Too much of anything … even love, is not necessarily a good thing.”