Whistle while you 'wilf' online

Survey says employees waste two days per month surfing the Internet at work.

from the April 18, 2007 edition

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"It's part of what I call the rise of the miscellaneous," he writes in an e-mail. "The Net makes available a practical infinity of small bits that we can then sort through just about any way we want to. The big benefits are that we now can shape our world more closely around our genuine interests (as opposed to having to rely upon the guesses made by editors of various sorts) and we can discover rich relationships that enhance the meaningfulness of things and our understanding of them.

"The big disadvantage is that we get lost all the ... time," Weinberger continues. "It's artificial befuddlement, but we're being befuddled by abundance. That strikes me as better than never being able to lose your way because there's such a scarcity of ways to go." (Weinberger examines this Web phenomenon more closely in his book "Everything Is Miscellaneous," scheduled for release next month.)

In my opinion, wilfing has all the earmarks of a trend, the kind that gets discussed on talk shows and endlessly in blogs.

Here's how I see the pop-cult arc of wilfing: First, wilfing appears as a keyword on the blog search website, Technorati.com. Then someone will write "Wilfing for Dummies." A few weeks later, watch for the Time magazine cover story "Wilfing: A danger to your sex life?" along with a special report by Dr. Sanjay Gupta on CNN.

Oprah will then have a show featuring those who are in "wilf recovery" programs. Larry King will interview two congressmen in a tight election race who will debate the question "Is wilfing destroying the fabric of American society?"

Finally, a blockbuster thriller appears starring Sandra Bullock as a naive FBI agent who accidentally discovers a secret government organization whose goal is to destroy the country by having everyone wilf at the same time.

I confess to mixed emotions on how much wilfing goes on at work. I feel bad for those companies that pay employees who spend much of their time wilfing. On the other hand, I'd be pleased to know that some of those wilfers wandered onto the Monitor's website to read my column as well as other articles this news organization produces.

In fact, wilfing doesn't have to take place online. For example, I've been known to do a little wilfing when reading a newspaper, checking out the sports section instead of keeping up with the latest technological trends.

Anyway, I would like to write more about wilfing, but I just saw a great piece on Darfur on the front page of the paper, and I want to read the daily update on terrorism and security at the Monitor website, and then there's that story about spring cleaning … now what was I doing again?

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