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[Idiom]

You've been warned.

Rapid-fire TV news bulletins or getting updates via social-networking tools such as Twitter could numb our sense of morality and make us indifferent to human suffering, scientists say.

[Aqizzar]

Twit I say!  Twit as fast and as pointlessly as you can!

It'll be great, we'll be robots and stuff!

[Gunner-Chan]

All the wrongs in the world today and someone paid a bunch of scientists to study THAT?! My god what a waste of time and effort.

[Heron TSG]

Twit I say!

yup. twitter is fer twits!

[JoshuaFH]

Relevant!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PN2HAroA12w

[Idiom]

Relevant!

HEY! DUDE! I'M ON THE JOHN! WHAT'R YOOOUUU DOING?



Don't forget that news article about a link between low GPAs and Facebook/Myspace.

[Dasleah]

The writer / artist of Wigu said it best.

The internet made the world a much bigger place, but Twitter made it feel claustrophobic.

#twitterstupid, #socialcommentary, #talkingoutmyarse

@warrenellis can keep doing it, though. He called us electric internet whores this morning. That makes me smile.

[Aqizzar]

Spoiler: Old news is old. (click to show/hide)

[Duke 2.0]

I...Bu...

 I look forward to being one of the last sane people in my immediate surroundings. Wait a second...
 Crap, I already have that living in DC.

[Yanlin]

Good thing I chose to stay oblivious to twitter. But at least it drags in more idiots that I don't have to converse with.

[A_Fey_Dwarf]

I actually read a novel recently (The lost World by Micheal Crichton) where a character stated the internet has ended human evolution and will eventually be the cause of our extinction. I can't find the exact text right now but I thought it was quite interesting and relevant to the topic. I actually agree with this statement to some extent and found it a pretty interesting perspective. I'll edit in the text when I find it.

[Aqizzar]

Actually, it reminded me of one of my favorite songs, Paul Simon's "The Boy in the Bubble".

And I believe
These are the days of lasers in the jungle,
Lasers in the jungle somewhere,
Staccato signals of constant information,
A loose affiliation of millionaires
And billionaires and baby,
These are the days of miracle and wonder,
This is the long distance call,
The way the camera follows us in slo-mo
The way we look to us all, oh yeah,
The way we look to a distant constellation
That's dying in a corner of the sky,
These are the days of miracle and wonder
And don't cry baby, don't cry

I posted the whole stanza because it's a great song.

[A_Fey_Dwarf]

From page 339 of 1996 softback publication of Micheal Crichton's The Lost world.

"I think cyberspace means the end of our species."
"Yes? Why is that?"
"Because it means the end of innovation," Malcolm said. "This idea that the whole world is wired together is mass death. Every biologist knows that small groups in isolation evolve fastest. You put a thousand birds on an ocean island and they'll evolve very fast. You put ten thousand on a big continent and their evolution slows down. Now, for our own species, evolution occurs mostly through our behavior. We innovate new behavior to adapt. And everybody on earth knows that innovation occurs in small groups. Put three people on a committee and they may get something done. Ten people, and it gets harder. Thirty people, and nothing happens. Thirty million, it becomes impossible. That's the effect of mass media--it keeps anything from happening. Mass media swamps diversity. It makes every place the same. Bangkok or Tokyo or London: there's a McDonald's on one corner, a Benetton on another, a Gap across the street. Regional differences vanish. All differences vanish. In a mass-media world there's less of everything except top ten books, records, movies, ideas. But what about intellectual diversity--our most necessary resource? That's disappearing faster than trees. But we haven't figured that out so now we're planning to put five billion people together in cyberspace. And it'll freeze the entire species. Everything will stop in it's tracks. Everyone will think the same thing at the same time. Global uniformity."

Very pessimistic, but who isn't these days?

[Aqizzar]

You consider 1996 "these days"?  I know, it surprises me too every time I think about how long ago the 90's were.

Remember AOL?  And "answering machines"?  And Hackers?

[Jackrabbit]

I'm not pessimistic my friend!

I don't really care about evolution anyway, technology is what will help, not an extra leg.

That would be cool though