In a recent EE Times survey of 285 engineers, 85% reported that they don’t use Twitter. More than half indicated that the statement “I don’t really care what you had for breakfast,” best sums up their feelings about it; others characterized it as “a ridiculous waste of time and electrons” or expressed the strong desire for it to simply “go away.”Yeah, that's kinda where I am, too. I don't care if it goes away, and I don't care that it's there, but ridiculous waste of time and electrons seems pretty spot on.
“The amount of information in a tweet is not worth the time spent looking at it,” asserts Jeffrey Tuttle, a hardware design engineer with 20 years of experience. “To be productive when doing design you need long periods of uninterrupted thought. Twitter by its nature is intrusive and interruptive. Consequently it seems to be for those people who don’t have enough to do.”Engineers and other highly educated workers tend to need to concentrate on tasks, studying them in great detail. I've come to call it Attention Surplus Syndrome; the opposite of ADD. You see it in craftsmen as well as doctors, engineers, authors and other professions. It's a good attribute for a sniper, too.
I guess I view Facebook the same way. I joined to see what it was, and maybe chat with dear son and daughter in law, the found friends I hadn't heard from in 30 years. I also have about 30 friend requests to wade through ("wait... who are you again?") and one friend who plays those non-stop Facebook games which fill my home page with stuff that means even less than what he had for breakfast. Dude, I'm studying history, economics, monetary theory, shooting, military strategy and tactics with just about every minute I'm not herding electrons. I don't have the time to play Mafia Wars or feed imaginary pets.
I'm not anti-social. I enjoy sitting for hours with friends, talking, or enjoying hobbies together. The social media is what sucks.
I have registered on facebook with just a first name and have no profile. Only to check out the photos Brigid Jr. posts.
ReplyDeleteI am lucky to visit my friends blogs once a week, and invite folks over for dinner every few months. If I was tweeting, friending and all that I'd be wearing last week's laundry.
Brigid, I'm honored that you've dropped by!
ReplyDeleteNot to sound like too much of a fan-boy, but I've been reading your blog regularly for over a year.
Anyway, that's an excellent approach. I need to look at dropping my current FB ID and re-joining. Maybe let just a few people know. My approach has been to just ignore it. Probably not the best way.