Okay, perhaps that was a little melodramatic, but it got you to read this didn’t it?

But I digress – linked here is a very interesting piece by Kathy Sierra titled “Is Twitter Too Good?” on Creating Passionate Users. In it, she waxes philosophical about the potential dangers of the new microblogging trend, something I’ve been trying to both do and avoid for a while now. Sierra argues that outlets like Twitter provide a false sense of connection, while constantly sapping any linear, focused and ‘deep’ streams of thought. The bit that struck me:

Worst of all, this onslaught is keeping us from doing the one thing that makes most of us the happiest… being in flow. Flow requires a depth of thinking and a focus of attention that all that context-switching prevents. Flow requires a challenging use of our knowledge and skills, and that’s quite different from mindless tasks we can multitask (eating and watching tv, etc.) Flow means we need a certain amount of time to load our knowledge and skills into our brain RAM. And the more big or small interruptions we have, the less likely we are to ever get there.

While I always end up being an apologist for Web 2.0 trends, I think most interesting (and relevant to me) is this notion of continual distraction – that there are movements towards the dissolution of sustained thought and the kinds of rewards it can bring. What strikes me as most problematic about this destruction of depth is that contemporary liberal-humanist democracies already function in such a manner to dissuade one from sustained critique – if you spend most of your time worrying about which PC to buy or what drapes go with your couch, you aren’t about to notice capitalism’s need for an underclass, are you?

Now if I could just get off this computer long enough to think through some of the further ramifications, I’d be all set. But if you’ll excuse me, I am off to post something snarky on Jaiku.