
Twenty years ago, I loved the comedy show called Short Attention Span Theatre. Lately, I keep being reminded of it… what has happened to us? Our culture cultivates and rewards having the attention span of a gerbil (I never lived with one, but I am told they are very fickle with their focus!) We have to be in constant contact with our 183 closest friends, but we want to keep it to 140 characters or less. We text instead of talking, message instead of writing, tweet because the world as we know it will cease to exist if everyone doesn’t know what we’re doing at least 5 times a day!
I must confess, I am dipping my toes in the murky waters of facebook these days, and trying to understand the draw, and the meaning of it all. A few times, I have gotten involved in a very interesting conversation thread with some pretty cool folks. But so much of the chatter seems to be just that! Chatting for the sake of keeping up some strange, fragmented sense of contact and connection. I find myself yelling at the names on my computer screen “Don’t you have anything better to do? Just pick up the damn phone and have an actual conversation with an actual person!”
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