The Twitter Debate

In response to an article that ran in the New York Times on January 1 entitled "Why Twitter Will Endure", George Packer of The New Yorker wrote this brief article on the downfalls of Twitter. I must say that I agree with most everything that Packer writes. It's funny, because I am a consistent Twitter-er, yet I am recognizing more and more the negative effects it and other technology has on my life. Most prominently, I've noticed a rapid decline in my attention span and my incessant need to be mentally/visually stimulated. Packer writes, "Who doesn’t want to be taken out of the boredom or sameness or pain of the present at any given moment? That’s what drugs are for, and that’s why people become addicted to them...Twitter is crack for media addicts. It scares me, not because I’m morally superior to it, but because I don’t think I could handle it. I’m afraid I’d end up letting my son go hungry." His criticism of Twitter has generated quite a response.

Read the article here - "Stop The World" by George Packer

- Joel