"Facebook is amazing because it feels like you’re doing something and you’re not doing anything"

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From the NYTimes:

High school student: “A book takes so long. I prefer the immediate gratification.”

Students have always faced distractions and time-wasters. But computers and cellphones, and the constant stream of stimuli they offer, pose a profound new challenge to focusing and learning.

“Their brains are rewarded not for staying on task but for jumping to the next thing." And the effects could linger.

The proponents say:

“If you’re not on top of technology, you’re not going to be on top of the world.”

“Video games don’t make the hole; they fill it.”

“I know I can read a book, but then I’m up and checking Facebook. Facebook is amazing because it feels like you’re doing something and you’re not doing anything. It’s the absence of doing something, but you feel gratified anyway.”

“Downtime is to the brain what sleep is to the body,” said Dr. Rich of Harvard Medical School. “But kids are in a constant mode of stimulation.”

References:
Growing Up Digital, Wired for Distraction. NYTimes.

Image source: Wikipedia.

New York Times Will Charge Online Readers After They Have Read a Certain Number of Articles Per Month

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From the NY Magazine:

"Hanging over the deliberations is the fact that the Times’ last experience with pay walls, TimesSelect, was deeply unsatisfying and exposed a rift between Sulzberger and his roster of A-list columnists, particularly Tom Friedman and Maureen Dowd, who grew frustrated at their dramatic fall-off in online readership.

Not long before the Times ultimately pulled the plug on TimesSelect, Friedman wrote Sulzberger a long memo explaining that, while he was initially supportive of TimesSelect, he’d been alarmed that he had lost most of his readers in India and China and the Middle East.

“As we got into it, it was clear to me I was getting cut off from a lot of my readers in India and China where 50 dollars per year would be equal to a quarter of college tuition,” Friedman recently told me by phone. “What was coming to me anecdotally from my travels was the five worst words that as a columnist you ever want to hear: "I used to read you before you went behind the wall."

Quality content is, and will be, paid in some form in the future - see WSJ and UpToDate pay models, for example. Free resource such as Medscape, eMedicine and Merck manuals are great but are not match for UpToDate yet.

Updated 01/20/2010:

Starting in early 2011, visitors to NYTimes.com will get a certain number of articles free every month before being asked to pay a flat fee for unlimited access. Subscribers to the newspaper’s print edition will receive full access to the site.

The Wall Street Journal which makes certain articles accessible only to subscribers. The Financial Times allows non-paying readers to see up to 10 articles a month, a system close to what is planned by The Times.

References:
New York Times Ready to Charge Online Readers. NYmag.com.
The Times to Charge for Frequent Access to Its Web Site. NYTimes.
BuzzMachine, Jeff Jarvis.

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On Vacation and Looking for Wi-Fi: The Pressure To Be Always Available

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From the NYTimes:

Email: "Now, we keep up on vacation, we keep up on weekends (my incoming work e-mail suggests we also keep up past midnight on weekdays). And on Monday morning, we hit the ground running.

These days, rarely do I receive one of those automated e-mail responses saying, “Sorry I’m on vacation, I’ll answer when I return.”

References:
On Vacation and Looking for Wi-Fi. NYTimes.

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