The same people that wouldn’t be “caught dead” watching 3-4 hours of TV per day spend at least that much time twittering, facebooking, surfing wikipedia/youtube and reading RSS feeds of people they’ll never meet (although now that ariel lives in my hood, I suppose that might change).

The book “Bowling Alone” makes some pretty good arguments about how being more individualistic has led to less connectedness. There’s some weird irony in that we’re more “connected” now than ever (always-on Internet, mobile phones that people can reach us on any time of the day or night, etc.) and yet also less connected.

I work in the information industry (I am a user experience architect) and the reason I do the work I do is not because I love technology and information saturation. It is because I think these things are totally useful if we design them right, and if the way we put them out in the world asks us to use them in ways that are more human, less fragmented. I think we can bake this into product design.

I also think some of my information tools really enrich my life and save me time so I can get to the more important things.

Just shut stuff off. Don’t respond to every email/text as you get them. Don’t answer the cell phone if you’re otherwise occupied. Don’t bring the laptop to the meeting. It’s all pretty simple. Single-tasking is severely under-rated.

Or, as this post about all the new web 2.0 social networking tools puts it:

The real reason, of course, for all this stuff, is that it provides a way to blow off work you should be doing, while creating the illusion that you are achieving something. At least in most offices, you can�t masturbate at your desk. But you can Tweet.