Over in Germany, Sigi Jakob-Kuhn (Twitter: @Networking_Lady) has alerted me to another excellent buzz word which belongs to 2008 - Digistraction. The word was coined by Jochen Lueders, Munich and is the 'capability of digital media, particularly the Internet, to draw someone’s attention away from something by making them look at something else, often a succession of other things, e.g. web sites'. Reading this definition reminds me of a superb book I read earlier this year by Mark Curtis entitled 'Distraction: Being Human in the Digital Age', which tackles the same issues from a slightly different perspective. Curtis writes: 'The explosion of new communications technology - the internet and mobile phones - means we've reached a social tipping point of no return: for we are becoming 'always on'. Not only connected all the time to the 'network', but distributing ourselves to others through it'.
On Twitter just a few hours ago Nergiz Kern (Twitter: @NergizK) who is in Turkey remarked that 'Twitter is such a distraction :-) I want to get some work done but always get side-tracked. I still love you all ;)' She seemed mindful (as should we all) that although Twitter was distracting her from her work, she did not wish to alienate herself from her 'network' of friends. I suppose that all of us in the coming year who are distributing ourselves across social networks will need to discover that fine balance between digistraction and action.
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