Andrew Sullivan is back from his month-long vacation from The Daily Dish, cable TV, and the internet with some interesting reflections:
What did penetrate was the long-term cost to spending the majority of your waking hours on a laptop and modem communicating with people you rarely see, and processing reams and reams of stories and data at lightning speed morning, noon and night. I do not see the web as Leon Wieseltier does from the vantage point of his towering pedestal who on earth approximates his lofty genius?, but I do see its dangers the longer I hang around in it. It took weeks to unwind enough to do the things I used to do with no real effort: socialize, chill, make new friends, catch up with old ones, let the mind wander, let the soul breathe with a little less concern for contemporaneity, read the paper because youre mildly interested in whats gong on in the wider world.
Worth keeping in mind for those of us who spend inordinate amounts of time (albeit justified time) online.