Wednesday, February 18, 2009

Living in the Age of Too Much Information (TMI): Boston Herald runs my humorous op-ed

Here's an excerpt from the article, "Virtual world of trouble," which ran Feb. 14, 2009:

If the 1990s were the Information Age, this decade has become the Too Much Information Age (TMI).

With the proliferation of social networking sites that include Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Ning, LinkedIn, Plaxo along with others too numerous and odd to name, millions of people are going online to talk about themselves.

...

BusinessWeek reporter (and Facebook friend) Steve Hamm once commented that most of his online “friends” were people he had never met, and none had attended his wedding. I’ve met him once and have spoken with him over the years, but the point is valid. (Problem is I can’t remember where I read that comment of his: On Twitter? On Facebook? On his blog?)

Like Hamm, I’ve got “friends” I’ve never met before, and their friends. And those people’s friends. And they’ve got me.

It’s overwhelming, if not exhausting. It’s enough to give me social networking fatigue (SNF).

No comments: