The downsides of Twitter

Recently, The Island of Doubt blog put up a list that I think will generate a lot of RTs ("re-tweets"): Why Twitter is evil. A small sample:

Maybe if we weren't paying so much attention to our iPhones and Blackberries, we'd notice that the planet is going to hell in a handbasket

Interestingly, the first time I heard of Twitter, it was on the much-missed Creating Passionate Users blog, raising the same concerns. (And by the way, that was in late 2006. Remember, it takes years to become an overnight sensation.)

The first post about Twitter:

Worst of all, this onslaught is keeping us from doing the one thing that makes most of us the happiest... being in flow. Flow requires a depth of thinking and a focus of attention that all that context-switching prevents. Flow requires a challenging use of our knowledge and skills, and that's quite different from mindless tasks we can multitask (eating and watching tv, etc.) Flow means we need a certain amount of time to load our knowledge and skills into our brain RAM. And the more big or small interruptions we have, the less likely we are to ever get there.

On Uncertain Principles discusses an example of how instant communication was... abject failure, from the sounds of it.

Dan Roam takes blogging, Facebook, and Twittering to its logical conclusion.

Additional: A good post on the pros and cons of Twitter and how it’ll interact with presentations here.