A lot less net
It's a good bet that I'm going to be "online" a lot less this year. For a variety of reasons the amount of time I've tended to spend on irc and im isn't sustainable and needs to go way down. I'll probably avoid both entirely during the workday, or if it's critical, I'll use new and more anonymous handles.
In the past I've had a pretty good track record sensing when something tech/cultural is on the verge of trendiness. In this case, I'm not so sure, but I wouldn't be surprised if we start hearing more and more about how wiped out people feel about tech in general and online tech culture in particular. Web 2.0 might be all about participation, but it's a hard bet that it'll play in the VC sticks as well as it has when people start turning off in noticeable proportions.
I'll still be around, just not so obviously. If you really need to talk, please call me. Yknow, on the phone.
Ed Summers (not verified) on January 03rd 2007
You know people will grow and grow out of it, but I doubt that enthusiasm for the online world is going any place soon. I guess if you have to cut back on something cutting back on the library blogging would be more important that the A-list sex blogging :-)
dchud on January 03rd 2007
Seriously. Somebody's got to pay all these bills, and the biblioblogosphere just isn't the same guaranteed-seven-figure cash cow it once was, let me tell you.
walt crawford (not verified) on January 03rd 2007
You're cutting down on inherently "interrupt-driven" but also nearly synchronous communication? Sounds good to me. In addition to the phone, I've found email still works nicely because it's inherently asynchronous and needn't interrupt you at all. But then, I believe in focus, and have tended to avoid tools that encourage too much multitasking.
But that's IM and IRC, and I'm the wrong one to comment (since I can count my total uses of either without using both hands).
The more general issue of social-software participation is, I suspect, still up in the air--except that there are some huge disconnects between claimed numbers and probable real numbers. (I'd say more, but I think that's going to be my next disContent column, and I should save it for that.) I'm hoping that more people past age 24 (say) will start to relegate online-world enthusiasm to the tool category (very useful, sometimes fun, easy to overdo) and I suspect that those under 24 will tend toward a better balance of online participation and the non-virtual world as they age.
Blogging is easy: Most libloggers have already relegated it to a "when I feel a need" status, as far as I can tell (precious few liblogs get updated every day or every other day), and that works just fine.
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