Twitter a-twitter

checking out the latest status changes or who said what to whom on twitter prevents us from reading that boring article or doing the laundry or being alone with our own thoughts for a few minutes?

Absolutely. The feeling of needing to be in touch is druglike in the way it facilitates avoidance.

Thanks for the comment, Miko! FYI, although I am for the most part but a lowly lurker, I am still a regular reader of Metafilter + talk, thanks to RSS.

Your quote & comment zero in on exactly the same material that drew me to that post. Sometimes I'm glad the web wasn't around when I was growing up--I was in PA Dutch Country craving to connect with the Whole Wide World out There, and I think I would have been on news & message boards 24/7 instead of, well, um, reading comic books and imagining I had a TARDIS.

OK, maybe that wasn't the best example, but the bigger point still holds. We're wired for social interaction and positive feedback, and as you say the web gives us that in a concentrated form, like crack.

Of course, sometimes I flip this around and think, gee, wouldn't it be great if real-world work offered a similar environment? But that's life as it is, I guess--a turbulent flow of magic and the mundane.