If you are a twitterer you wont have time to read this

From the Sidelines

When was the last time you sat down to dinner, and re read the menu from end to end while your companion fiddled with a Blackberry or Ipod? 

Or, instead of focusing on the ever increasing prices of your favorite eatery’s bill of fare, you may have glanced around the room and spotted couples each “chattering” with their fingers, unaware that they were “out to dinner”.

Have you counted how many times recently you have been bumped into by a cell phone twitterer on the sidewalk, in the mall, supermarket or airport? Or maybe you have wondered at the ability, courage or stupidity (make your  own choice) of texting freaks crossing roads blindly through rushing traffic, including diablo rojo drivers looking to add a few notches to their tally for the year.

If you have attended a business meeting, how many of the participants had their heads down reading their messages beneath the table? Are your kids failing in maths but able to shoot to kill on a TV screen with remarkable accuracy while pressing buttons on an expensive control pad, soon to be outdated?
If you are a contributor to Facebook and it’s hundreds of imitators, have you felt humiliated, because you don’t have four or five thousand “friends” ready to let you know they got up, showered, went to work, got drunk with the boys or girls, got lucky, or went home alone?
You have been witnessing the delusion of cyberspace 'connectedness' that has created a twittering new world.
If you have wondered about all or any of the above 'Alone Together' is for you. That’s the title of a book  by a professor at the MIT who has the courage to say that the emperor has few clothes and that we are losing our minds to a mania for the social media of Twitter, Facebook and instant messaging.
Professor Sherry Turkle's new book points out that we are in danger of relinquishing our humanity to "social robotics" and a "new social confusion." We are swapping real life for vicarious life.
 A commentator in Britain’s First Post says: “There have been warnings before from shrinks and sociologists, not to mention anyone with the commonsense to have got angry at those texting away under the dinner table or the idiot bumping into you because he is buried in his Blackberry. But Turkle is the first to get the message through. Alone Together has sparked debate on where all this is taking us. The backlash has begun.”
 But, the backlash to the backlash has set in . Every book reviewer, commentator and reporter can, after all, be "reached on Twitter".
The word Luddite buzzes through cyberspace as furious fingers tap the interactive screens.
But it’s hard to dispute Turkle's argument.
"We're using inanimate objects to convince ourselves that even when we're alone, we feel together," she writes. "And then when we are with each other, we put ourselves in situations where we feel alone – constantly on our mobile devices.
"It's what I call a perfect storm of confusion about what's important in our human connections. In solitude, new intimacies, in intimacies, new solitude."
Talking to school kids, she finds that they are so used to hiding behind the cyber-walls of Twitter, text and Facebook posts that they are actually afraid to make a telephone call, let alone look someone in the eye at a face-to-face meeting.
Turkle, a psychology professor in MIT's Science, Technology and Society program, warns that all this is as addictive as dope, and for the same reason. "The adrenaline rush is continual," she says. "We get a little shot of dopamine every time we make a connection.
"Having the latest device offers the same kind of dopamine rush. They are flaunted by the types who think that he or she who gets the most messages at the party or the business meeting wins. They have no idea that they are simply the cheap version of the old style social climber who pays the waiter to whisper in his ear that he is wanted on the telephone, urgently".

 Studies have indicated that the cyber clatter is numbing the brain, shortening the attention span, limiting the ability for real conversations, and eroding the bonds – such as empathy – that hold us together.
"We have forgotten how to respond ethically, emotionally and intellectually to the challenges, desires and opportunities of life at home and at work," says Michael Bugeja, who wrote Interpersonal Divide in 2004, . His conclusion was: "The more connected, the more isolated."
Uproar over Turkle's book has brought other academics to the fore, Evgeny Morozov argues that social media makes people "slackovists", always ready to post an opinion but never to do anything useful.(Read some of the Newsroom reader comments.

Mark Bauerlein of Emory University in his book  The Dumbest Generation says "The intellectual future of the US looks dim,"  and adds that   neuro-science project has studied the ‘brainwaves' of teenagers playing video games while texting and keeping their eye on the Facebook page. Patterns of brain activity lit up the scanners in phenomenal displays of multi-tasking. But the same brains glowed only dimly when asked to focus on writing a story or solving a math problem.
"We have invented inspiring and enhancing technologies, yet we have allowed them to diminish us," warnsTurkle. "We've gone through tremendously rapid change, and some of these things just need a little sorting out”.
Thank heavens there are still some Luddites in Panama who attend a monthly discussion on books they have read, and nary a keypad in sight. Thank you Laraine Chaplin.