Americans– I have to put myself in that group too, of course– are easily fooled by Utopian claims. Maybe we don’t really think that an IPAD will transform our lives, not really anyway, but we’re willing to buy one anyway, just in case. In the last few decades especially, this has been the secret of that collective hallucination known as marketing. New technology is our collective self-medication. Inevitably, of course, we are disappointed.
It turns out that multitasking is neurologically impossible. YouTube is used by the military to promote war as much it is by professors to help students understand MLA. IM’ing seems to be gone; texting is a great tool for bullies. And now, it turns out that teen aged social networking, the miracle of MySpace and Facebook, has adult consequences, and according to research reported in the New York Times, kids are backing off. I wonder how long it will take for the next revolution to start.
