[neilk]

I constantly see my peers lamenting how technology has "taken" their time and space for reflection away and have no idea what they're talking about.

It may be uncool to admit but I have no trouble at all keeping my inbox to zero unread items. And I do have a social life -- less active than many, but more active than a lot of people. I even read books, actual physical things made of paper, in my spare time.

How do I do this? I think maybe I instinctively understand that my personal information processing abilities are limited. I know I'm not a computer; I don't try to be like one. First of all, I subscribe or commit to relatively little, and of what I do follow, I don't feel any obligation to read everything. Mailing lists are aggressively filtered, even when I read them I'm culling entire threads left and right. Facebook I avoid unless I want to keep up with invitations and so on. Quora was starting to become a bit addicting, so I've curtailed that.

Am I abnormal? Do the rest of you just... let the machine take from you what it will? Why? Is there some ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED: I READ THE INTERNET that I'm unaware of?

P.S. I'll admit that I failed rather badly a company where everyone was expected to read hundreds if not thousands of mail items daily. But I still blame that not on the fact that I didn't read EVERYTHING, but that I didn't prioritize effectively.

P.P.S. It even grinds my gears that this person laments random connections with people on the subway have now, in the Facebook era, somehow become an impossibility. It's not! I've done it! It's really not that hard. And yes I live in San Francisco, not Iowa.

[zephyrfalcon]

I don't know if you're abnormal, but for me personally, the problem is more that there are so many things online that are interesting. It's so easy to get caught up, click another link, open another tab, or two, or ten, then spend another hour reading, or two, or the whole morning. Then at some point you realize, oops, hours have passed, I haven't done a damn thing, and yet for some reason I'm drained and exhausted.

Maybe this effect is stronger in those who remember when information was scarce, especially information on subjects that used to be obscure, like, say, programming languages. :) You instinctively try to eat up as much as possible. Except that strategy is actually harmful nowadays, because there simply is too much information on just about anything, for one person to process. That concept is easy to grasp, but it's not so easy to actually change our habits.

[khafra]

Re.P.P.S: I've found it possible, enjoyable, and even personally enriching to strike up conversations with random people on NYC subways. I'd imagine San Francisco would be similar. Here in Tampa Bay, however, striking up a conversation on public transportation is only interesting for a mental health professional practicing his diagnostic skills. A certain concentration of interesting people is required before one can have a chance at finding one who isn't busy updating his facebook status from his phone.

[jyoti00]

Glad to know that someone else is being human, not allowing machine to take over or Facebook to replace real friends:) Like your attitude, fully endorse it.