I'm like a cat chasing a laser pointer

The Wall Street Journal had a really interesting article giving a possible evolutionary biological explanation for web addiction.

The article discusses a series experiments with the researcher, Dr. Biederman, concluding that:

". . . coming across . . . new and richly interpretable information triggers a chemical reaction that makes us feel good, which in turn causes us to seek out even more of it. The reverse is true as well: We want to avoid not getting those hits because, for one, we are so averse to boredom."

Why is this information unique to the web generation, because:

"For most of human history, there was little chance of overdosing on information, because any one day in the Olduvai Gorge was a lot like any other. Today, though, we can find in the course of a few hours online more information than our ancient ancestors could in their whole lives."

So there's actually a scientific explanation for why I have to read the new blog entries in my Google reader every morning. I feel much better now since there's an evolutionary reason behind it. Now if I can only get someone to pay me money to spend hours reading interesting stuff online . . .