Cracked Window

I’m prone to distraction. Part of this stems from many years working in newsrooms, mostly as an editor who thrived on the dual high of daily deadlines and the unexpected. Loving all things web-based hasn’t helped either.

Now comes Maggie Jackson’s book, Distracted: The Erosion of Attention and the Coming Dark Age, which examines the effects of our increasingly fragmented ability to focus.

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Anyone doubting the grassroots power of online social media should consider this story, which I wrote for today’s edition of The Oregonian.

Without Twitter, Facebook, and blogs, a son’s heart-warming attempt to help his mother’s financially ailing bookstore would have never reached and connected with so many people so quickly.

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I’m twittering about Twitter.

Skeptical is the best description of my initial reaction to using this social media service. I was skeptical about sharing observations, random thoughts, and general announcements of what’s happening at any given moment in my life — in only 140 characters. (See examples on the right side of this blog’s home page.)

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