Is social media making us ill?
Interesting conversation over on Stowe Boyd’s blog about Linda Stone’s points about Continuous Partial Attention. She says something interesting: that being in a continuous partial attention state all the time is making us ill. I believe it. I started working out about a week ago for the first time. You’ll probably notice me doing less and less online as I try to bring my health up (and catch up on email).
In response I’m offline for the next few days. Maryam and I are going to Cabo to speak to a PRSA meeting down there. Be back on Wednesday. Looking forward to being offline.
As to Flickr, what’s up with taking Violet Blue’s photos down?
Want a distraction? Last night I had dinner with Loic Le Meur, who is moving to San Francisco from Paris with his family and he filmed a video interview of me. I talk some smack back to Jason Calacanis. Hi Jason!
Anyway, have fun, see ya on Wednesday — if Akismet’s comment spam filter catches your comment, I probably won’t be able to approve it until then. I’ll be off cell phone too. Staying at the Westin.
Powered By 
June 9th, 2007 at 10:33 am
I started a new health program two weeks a go.
- I’ve lost 5lbs a week in first two weeks
- I eat 5 times a day
- I don’t do any specific exercise, but can do special walking to accelerate it more if I want
- Program explains how busting a gut at the gym is a waste of time unless you’re body building
- I just buy normal fresh food and eat all food groups
- Can (haven’t yet) do a specific workout 2 times a week to shape any specific bulges
June 9th, 2007 at 10:39 am
P.S.
- Program also says what to order in or eat at your favourite restaurants, e.g. I had Chinese and Greek this week
- I got the program because of the credibility of the person behind it
- I will admit it’s the only thing I’ve ever bought as the direct result of a TV commercial and even then I thought about it for a few days
- I’ll be putting the details and my progress on my blog in the future
Robert, email me if you want the details.
June 9th, 2007 at 11:08 am
RSS is a stream of stuff most people really don’t care about.
The iPhone for instance may very well be great. But what’s the point of talking about it to no end. Just buy one and use it when it’s out. It’s that simple.
Remember the Origami BS, or Vista, Longhorn, or Tiger?
Funny how you never mention Seagate your sponsor, and they keep selling hard drives none the less.
Maybe sales DON’T have anything to do with blogs or Techmeme or that type of promotion. Maybe people buy things and even gadgets because they actually need them.
Scary thought for those who are invested in.
June 9th, 2007 at 11:14 am
[...] to be working for someone in a similar position to you. I decide to mention it after I saw Robert Scoble’s post asking if Social Media is making us ill where he mentions that he’s going to the gym to get healthy. This program gives some [...]
June 9th, 2007 at 11:24 am
Dang.. iPhone is going to be a forest! =)
June 9th, 2007 at 11:24 am
Well, even thought I don’t play the blogger short-attention-span games, it gives me headaches just listening to the quackery practitioners flapper on and on, continuously inventing up new buzz words.
Disruptive Holistic Community-Attention-Based Amorphous and Ubiquitous Wikized Social Media. Gosh, I need a Excedrin already.
June 9th, 2007 at 11:32 am
I’ll be joining Robert on the health swing- First is to kill my smoking. I live on the beach so I will be doing a lot more walking- regularly, that is.
My wife is an aerobic fanatic ( I reap those bennies ) but has learned not to push it on me.
I was a kick-boxer in my teens and twenties- I doubt I can or want to reach that condition again but will be pleased to get somewhere close. Wish me luck- I’ll need it.
Hey Chris!
June 9th, 2007 at 11:35 am
Maybe people buy things and even gadgets because they actually need them.
Well, everywhere except a 50 mile Bay Area radius, and few other ‘trendy for trendy sakes’ areas.
That’s one of the ironic things, a good product, that meets market needs, at the right price, sells itself. Of course, you need to strategically determine needs beforehand. Marketing can take a good product to greater heights, but it can never lift up a bad product, not in the long-term. Marketing is like half of medicine, a distraction, while nature cures the disease (a little François-Marie Arouet lingo there).
PS - ‘though’ and ‘an’, trigger happy Tabbing, wish blog comments went more forum-based.
June 9th, 2007 at 12:21 pm
from the plane: lots of people buy lots of gadgets. Just watch how many iphones get sold.
June 9th, 2007 at 12:27 pm
never mention seagate? You are not paying attention. But door is closing so will have to pick up on this later.
June 9th, 2007 at 12:29 pm
I had a dream last night that Alan, the Head Lemur was blogging again. Alas, just a dream.
June 9th, 2007 at 1:03 pm
Robert, I’ve always wondered how on earth your body manages to survive through all that (some new words here) flickring, twittering, wordpressing, gadgeting, etc. If I spent all that time near a laptop, my body would come to a grinding halt.
I wouldn’t blame social media. It’s just that we shouldn’t overdose.
I’m glad to hear that you are starting to exercise, with the junior coming up and all that…
Cheers.
June 9th, 2007 at 1:22 pm
I put a “Sponsored by Seagate” slate on EVERY SINGLE VIDEO BLOG of The Scoble Show. Not to mention Robert mentions that he is sponsored by Seagate ALL the time with few exceptions.
Chris- FOCUS!
June 9th, 2007 at 1:29 pm
I’ve been going to the nautilusplus.com gym since january. I went every day this week to burn off my beer gut.
Since this thread is about not so useful gadgets
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=120130279585
I only used it for travel. My old SuSE Linux laptop could not scan hotel wifi, so I would use the PSP wifi to get the SSID, then I would enter it in YaST for adhoc. Aside from that I lightly used it for games on flights to Europe and the US. Sorry I can’t help pimping this, so that some poor needy soul can get it cheaply.
No, I did not buy a Zune, and yes, I still love my PS3. I went with an Apple airplane entertainment solution. One I can stick in my pocket and don’t have to fumble around with.
June 9th, 2007 at 1:54 pm
Rocky, I just read back through your comments. Sorry about that. I mostly read this blog at work, and I do not have the flash player installed on the work computer at my desk.
I really have no idea what Robert’s videos are like. I only very seldomly watch one. I know there is a sponsored by Seagate intro on the videos. I was talking about mentioning them in his blog the way he would mention a Microsoft product in every other post when they were paying him.
Remember the way he hyped up the Origami for weeks and it turned out to be nothing more than vapor-hard-ware?
He doesn’t do that with the new companies. I’m not sorry he doesn’t, I’m just saying.
June 9th, 2007 at 6:24 pm
Hmmm - I wonder if it would be more accurate to say “increased sedentary time” leads to bad health? Social media has kept many of us online even longer than before ..and please pass over more chips and soda…
June 9th, 2007 at 7:24 pm
Glad to read you’re finally prying yourself off of the internets to actually DO something :-P
June 9th, 2007 at 8:02 pm
@8 iPhone is not going to be bought by people who need an iPhone. It’s going to be bought by people who need to say, “I have an iPhone.” Incalculable (though ephemeral) status will be lost by people who are forced to spend the month of July without being able to offer their first-hand opinion of it.
June 9th, 2007 at 9:01 pm
@11 “Robert, I’ve always wondered how on earth your body manages to survive through all that (some new words here) flickring, twittering, wordpressing, gadgeting, etc. If I spent all that time near a laptop, my body would come to a grinding halt.”
Of all the things in the world to wonder about, you pick that?
June 9th, 2007 at 9:16 pm
@3 “Maybe sales DON’T have anything to do with blogs or Techmeme or that type of promotion. Maybe people buy things and even gadgets because they actually need them.”
“What the customer buys and considers value is NEVER a product. It is ALWAYS a utility, that is, what a product or service DOES for him”
-Peter Drucker.
June 9th, 2007 at 10:06 pm
@19 far be it from me to disagree with the master, but “utility” overstates it–unless you take a very broad view of the word “utility.” Very often, in our advertising and PR governed world, the customer is buying a feeling or a hope and utility be damned.
June 9th, 2007 at 10:24 pm
I’ve heard and read Robert talking about Seagate many times on his blog and in his videos. I also saw him spend a significant amount of his time and energy talking about Zooomr over the past several weeks, a company I do not believe he has any financial stake in. He used his vast connections to try and get financial and hardware help for Zooomr in their time of need.
June 10th, 2007 at 4:30 am
@19,
I can imagine a reader of Scoble’s blog walking into a best buy, needing a new cell phone, seeing what he needs for $99 or even for free with a 3 year plan and right before purchasing: pausing; rubbing his chin; and frantically telling the clerk to take it out of the bag, because he remembered that he saw the “Nokia N95″ on Scoble’s blog. Besides it possibly being out of his budget and not what he really wanted, he gets it anyway. So he can “be like Scoble”?
While this make work with Nike and Micheal Jordan, I don’t quite think that can ever translate with a blogger. A-List or not. It’s like those “pro atheletes” that wear the Q-Ray bracelet.
@18,
That may very well be the case, but they will buy an iPhone because it’s cool and because Jobs told them to as well as silhouettes dancing around in commercials looking uber trendy. Not because of Valley talk and bloggers. Just like the iPod.
These tech services and 5 billion RSS feeds are not relevant to most people’s technology choices at all. Even the most A-list do not effect people’s choices. I dare say even TV shows like Mr. LaPorte’s lab and techtv do not effect most people’s buying decisions.
If they got their product on ATOS on G4 and had Kevin Pereira or Olivia Munn pimp it, that would be another issue. Those people are hip and trendy and the people that watch that show are younger and have less of a mind of their own.
June 10th, 2007 at 7:12 am
Proffesor Tom Davenport arguess that “we’ve been empowered to exercise more choice over the information we attend to.”… “But just as we enjoy meals much more when we haven’t eaten for a while, we’ll be better information consumers if we occasionally savor the silence.”
We certainly have more info and we have to be selective. Today nobody has the time or the speed to read everything we post. Sometimes I find myself reading in diagonal. When I reaqd something technical, I have to concentrate to change modes.
Mario Ruiz
http://www.oursheet.com
June 10th, 2007 at 11:08 am
22: that’s funny. I talk more about startups than probably anyone except for Mashable, GigaOm, and TechCrunch. Out of the 200+ interviews I’ve done more than half are with startups. But, Chris has proven over and over again that he doesn’t pay attention to such things (and admits such).
I was at Kyte.tv on Friday. Another startup.
As to Origami. New hardware always takes a long time to catch on. When the Mac came out in 1984 it took until about 1990 before it really started to take off.
I guess if Chris was around in 1984 he would have said the Mac was all hype too.
Origami’s concepts are still around. Many of the gesture-based things in the iPhone were shown to me on Origami first. And Intel is continuing to pour money into the Origami concept and several new ones have shipped in the last few months.
Was I a bit exuberant? Sure.
I’m surprised no one brought up my exuberance of Second Life here.
But, back to sitting on the beach at Cabo.
June 10th, 2007 at 11:46 am
@19 LOL!!!
June 10th, 2007 at 11:51 am
Chris: go back and read my blog before I was employed by Microsoft. Nearly my entire blog was about Microsoft stuff. I was always talking about them back then, before I was getting a paycheck from them. In fact, talk to Dave Winer. Back when I was working for him he got mad at me cause I talked about Microsoft so much.
June 10th, 2007 at 12:04 pm
Robert- Shouldn’t you be slammin’ tequila and Coronas?
June 10th, 2007 at 12:35 pm
[...] Robert Scoble denkt er hetzelfde over. Hij beweert ook dat je van sociale media ziek wordt. En als Scoble het zegt, dan moet het wel waar [...]
June 10th, 2007 at 1:51 pm
Have fun on your trip, looking forward to the next interview and what your thoughts were on VMWare versus. Parellels.
and take Rocky’s advice, tomas cerveza!
June 10th, 2007 at 2:17 pm
“Nearly my entire blog was about Microsoft stuff”
Then you joined Microsoft. Now every other post of yours is about Google. Could it be that …
On an completely unrelated note, When is your former boss, Vic, starting at google?
June 10th, 2007 at 3:00 pm
Seshadri: Vic is starting soon, if I remember when his non-compete ends.
Rocky: I have a keynote tomorrow so will abstain from doing such things. You don’t show up hungover with 200 of the world’s top PR people in the audience. That’ll doom you forever! :-)
But, I’m having fun.
20weblogs: VMWare is pretty cool. Actually it turned out more of a “meet the brilliant person behind VMWare” type of thing. I think you’ll really like it. They are announcing a new version tomorrow, though, and it’s pretty good.
June 10th, 2007 at 3:00 pm
“I guess if Chris was around in 1984 he would have said the Mac was all hype too.”
I was around. I was on my Commodore64. I didn’t give a crap about Mac. I still don’t give a crap about Mac. Most of the old Commodore users later used Amiga, and now use Linux. hmmmm…
“Nearly my entire blog was about Microsoft stuff.”
You may not have been *employed* by Microsoft, but you were certainly an MVP, and getting employed by Microsoft was ultimately your goal.
“Then you joined Microsoft. Now every other post of yours is about Google. Could it be that …”
I believe he’s already tried to no avail.
June 10th, 2007 at 3:13 pm
““Then you joined Microsoft. Now every other post of yours is about Google. Could it be that …”
I believe he’s already tried to no avail.”
I believe too ))
June 10th, 2007 at 3:15 pm
I also wanted to point out, that as somebody about to release a high traffic YCombinator type concept in about 2 months, Scoble publicity is just about the last thing you want. As Mark Lucovsky pointed out, Google reads Scoble’s blog.
So instead of silently growing your user base, having it highlighted here means that Google is instantly going to clone it if it has any worth. Before you can get it well known enough to make Google’s seem like a clone, just like kiko.
The sites that actually made it were never blogged about in the initial stages. Sites like MySpace, and Youtube amongst others were never mentioned by bloggers in their early stages. They were silently *used* by lots of people in the background of the internet. Keeping the signal low until their brand was sewn to the concept.
I don’t want to say that getting A-blogged is a death sentence for a startup, but it doesn’t help.
June 10th, 2007 at 3:26 pm
Actually it turned out more of a “meet the brilliant person behind VMWare” type of thing.
I wouldn’t expect anything less. Puff piece fluff-up-the-egos infomericals, cull them together and buy some late night Cable TV time, you’d get zillions more watchers that way over Podtech anyways.
June 10th, 2007 at 3:48 pm
Chris (#34): several of the companies that I’ve hyped up and had on ScobleShow.com have been purchased by Google.
June 10th, 2007 at 3:55 pm
“Chris (#34): several of the companies that I’ve hyped up and had on ScobleShow.com have been purchased by Google.”
I’m not sure which ones those are, but I do know that Google in fact trolls your blog as does MS. I will be releasing our new concept site from Canix under a pseudonym and under secrecy to avoid getting kiko’d ( yes I just made that a verb, I want credit )
The idea is always to fly under the rader until it’s too late for the big guys. Otherwise if you do get purchased it will be for pennies on the dollar.
Somebody wrote me reminding me that I shouldn’t be working on weekends. He had a good point.
June 10th, 2007 at 4:11 pm
Chris: StumbleUpon got bought by eBay. Koral got bought by Salesforce. Blinkx just went IPO. JotSpot got bought by Google. I thought there’s another company that I’ve interviewed get bought by Google too, might have just been thinking about one of the others, but don’t have time to go through my whole list. Tons of companies got funded after they were on my show, though.
June 10th, 2007 at 4:12 pm
Kiko got sold for $250K, if I remember right. And they went on to start Justin.TV, which has lots of people watching it.
June 10th, 2007 at 4:49 pm
“Kiko got sold for $250K, if I remember right.”
Wooooowww…. :/
There were like 6 people on that project if I remember correctly. It was picked up by Tucows.
The point is, more often than not hyping a website in the crosshairs of both MS and Google means it is an instant and gratuitous target. Our concept site will never be on your blog, but if in some nightmare theoretical situation it was it would mean the end of it for sure. The instant Google or MS thinks they found important new functionality you’re done. Whether it be by premature buy out or not. It’s only my opinion, but the more attention you draw to something prematurely, the worse it is.
June 10th, 2007 at 5:12 pm
Robert:
I hope you continue to write about your efforts to improve your health! While many of us love reading the blog, I (like others) also share the challenge and priority health has in our lives! I started blogging about my effort as a way to track my progress.
I hope there’s more blogging around this topic in the future!
June 10th, 2007 at 8:03 pm
“I believe he’s already tried to no avail.
I believe too ))”
See what happens after Vic starts there…
June 11th, 2007 at 5:42 am
I set myself a 30 day challenge two days ago.
- Get up at 7am (by choice, first time ever)
- Go for a run around the block
- read for at least 30 minutes
and I’ve started resiting sitting in front of the computer for certain time periods.. these blogs get quite addictive.. Thanks for the link.. I really dig the idea of ‘flow’
Paul
June 11th, 2007 at 10:04 pm
[...] way of Scoble’s blog in his post entitled Is Social Media Making Us Ill, Stowe Boyd has an awesome PDF of a presentation called Flow: A New Consciousness For a Web of [...]
June 12th, 2007 at 8:48 pm
See what happens after Vic starts there…
Yeah, the trump card — but even Vic can’t reform that cult, heck even Zwingli or John Calvin couldn’t have. Even if a top-tier university, yet not an engineer, banished. My chips say he stay’s with Podtech until they run outta money. One trick pony company anyways.
July 5th, 2007 at 4:53 am
Continuous Partial Inattention, anyone?
Is "flow" the new normal, or just a passing fad? Stowe Boyd argues eloquently that it is the new normal, but not everyone agrees. His talk at Reboot9 (it looked pretty similar to the talk he gave at Etel) took a swipe at Linda Sto…