SoylentNews

Phoenix666 [soylentnews.org] writes:

During the 1990s I started to get worried about the effect that email [nealstephenson.com] might have on my ability to function as a novelist. I ended up writing a little essay entitled "Why I Am a Bad Correspondent" which has since been read by many people and reprinted in "Some Remarks." Its subject was plain old email. This was long before the ubiquitous mobile Internet came along to bring us worldwide, 24/7 social media platforms exquisitely tuned to make us want to check them every few minutes--and to intrude on our screens with notifications when we fail to do so.

Though I never became a heavy poster on social media, I did reach a point last year when I was checking Twitter and my personal Facebook every few minutes. When I found myself manually refreshing the Facebook window in the hopes of dredging up posts I hadn't seen yet, I decided it was time to think a little harder about the effect that this was having on my ability to get things done.

Who needs social media when you have IRC?

Original Submission