Maybe a Little Social Media Fatigue Isn't Such a Bad Idea–BusinessWeek [GigaOM]

Excerpt from a timely social networking reality check

The idea of amusing ourselves to death comes from author Neil Postman, who wrote a book by the same name in 1985, in which he argued that instead of being oppressed by dictators the way George Orwell imagined it in his novel 1984, North American society was instead being dulled into insensitivity by television—in the same way that Aldous Huxley imagined a society addicted to a soporific drug called "soma," in his book Brave New World. For Postman, even television news was a form of entertainment rather than something that would actually help people become informed.

So are social networks and social media just another time-killing form of entertainment that gets in the way of the "real world"—and thereby prevents us from either raising serious issues or engaging with the world in a creative way?

Maybe a Little Social Media Fatigue Isn't Such a Bad Idea - BusinessWeek