Although it’s a slight misquote, the most lasting Oscar acceptance line of all time is Sally Field’s 1984 exclamation: “You like me, you really like me.”

That was back when it really meant something to like.

Between the spread of the Facebook “like” buttons and the seemingly ubiquitous opportunities to retweet, I wonder whether the whole meaning of liking or linking to something has been devalued.

You perform a single click on a big button to share your interest and affection. But what does it mean? Do you like my blog like you like the combined efforts of DaVinci and Einstein, or do you like it like you like the picture of that cat in the ski cap?

Maybe it’s just too easy to like something these days. I’ve had people with Twitter followers in the millions kindly link to my blog and the result has been anywhere from a handful to a several hundred new visitors. That’s a pretty small click-through rate. In the past, people who wanted to share content usually did so on a blog. They had to create a blog, build a following, and maybe learn a little html. It took some commitment and effort to share. It was an active choice as opposed to a knee-jerk reaction. And from that time until now, I find that the number of visits from even a lightly trafficked blog is markedly higher than many Facebook likes and Twitter retweets combined.

The musician and renowned over-sharer John Mayer addressed a related point when he announced his TMI migration from Twitter to the Tumblr blogging platform.

This is where Tumblr comes in. It’s the future of social networking if your image of the future features intelligent discourse. I love reading other Tumblr users replies, because they’re thoughtful by virtue of the fact that if they’re not, they’ll bring the intellectual property value of their own blog down, and that’s a commodity on Tumblr.

Sharing on a blog isn’t hard, but it puts a little more of your personal brand on the line and it leaves more time for potential reflection than just applying some pressure with your index finger or performing today’s version of long form work: the rattling off of a hundred forty characters and a cloud of dust.

The user interface of the web’s like buttons is so efficient and its output so transitory that together we’re all liking millions of things a day. That certainly provides a goldmine of data to marketers, and it also creates some great aggregate content for regular web civilians who want to browse the most popular news, videos and photos on the web.

But this trend towards such prolific and easy liking ultimately depreciates the value of each individual like. I am interested in something because you like it. Too much liking destroys the value of that personal recommendation.

That might not be too important as it relates to the sharing of funny cat videos or favorite Lady Gaga songs. But I worry that this pervasive and seamless socialization can ooze into our personal relationships and potentially dilute the value of friendship as well. If I order two copies of photos of my kids so I can send some to you, that is one manifestation of my affection; I “like” you. If I email you those same photos, it’s less effort for me, but the meaning is similar. But what if I share those same photos on a public blog or with a few hundred folks on Facebook? Hasn’t that very personal connection between you and me been watered down?

In the past few paragraphs, I’ve argued that blogs are thoughtful and I’ve quoted John Mayer. This is either a groundbreaking post or a desperate cry to be – in the words of my three year-old – really, really super liked.

Maybe we just need to come up with a different word for like when it comes to real life.

I suppose Sean Penn was prophetic about the evolution of the word “like” when he paraphrased Sally Field in his 1996 Independent Spirit Award acceptance speech:

“You tolerate me, you really tolerate me.”

On my first day as a high school teacher in Brooklyn, I passed through the front door metal detectors and climbed the crowded stairwells to the fifth floor. I was to report to room 526 where I would be substituting for a Physics teacher who, the day before, had asked a student to put away his Walkman. The student responded by stabbing the teacher in the hand with a pencil.

I was handed a Physics book and I began my slow, nervous walk down the paint-peeled fifth floor hall. As my mind filled with visions of a No. 2 Dixon Ticonderoga being jammed into my person, I realized I had already adopted my first teaching-relating philosophy: I was strongly against gadgets in school. But, at least on that first day in room 526, I had no intention of being part of the enforcement process.

Back then, cassette players were the only gadgets teachers really had to worry about. Today, students walk onto campus equipped with an arsenal of connected devices from iPhones to laptops. According to the latest numbers from Pew, three quarters of all teens own a cell phone, and almost all of them regularly exchange text messages with friends. While many adults complain they can’t get anything more out of their teen than the occasional eye-rolling shoulder shrug, active teen texters are rattling off a cool 1500 text messages a month.

Most schools have rules against texting in class while others have adopted school-wide cell phone bans. But even when bans are in place, more than half of the teens surveyed said they manage to send off an occasional text message from a classroom. And if you’re wowed by the today’s teens and the way they fire their machine gun thumbs at tiny keyboards, just wait. Their younger siblings are already training to smash the current texting pace. Twenty percent of kids between the ages of 6 and 11 have their own cell phones.

From my perspective as a former Brooklyn high school teacher, I can see how hard it would be to compete for classroom attention when the students have a pocketful of friends, music, videos, games and incoming text messages.

From my perspective as a parent, the issue is not quite so simple. While I am hesitant to willingly enable my children to follow too closely in my iPhone-zombie footsteps, I am attracted by the prospect of always keeping them within seven digits in case of emergency.

This always-on connection between parent and child can put a parent’s mind at ease, but I’m not certain it’s beneficial to the development of the child. Digital devices tend to blur the important line that separates parents from kids during the school day. At my son’s preschool, the teachers regularly take digital photos and then share them with parents. I used to sit on the couch and watch those online slide shows with my son. It was almost like I was there. And that’s the problem. My son’s awareness that I could see him in this environment infringed on the fundamental purpose of his preschool experience — to be in a place that was completely separate from his mom and me.

For a preschooler, the digital camera makes it seem like I’m almost there at school. For a teenager, the smart phone will do the same. Add that to the phone-based social and media distractions that will be a constant source of temptation, and I could easily make the argument against giving my son a cell phone for as long possible. But I’m not going to kid myself. The trend towards younger kids owning cell phones will only accelerate and that social reality along with my (real or perceived) need to be connected to my son will likely overpower any philosophical concerns I may have.

But I do hope that I can convince my then teenage son to break from his dad’s addicted ways and occasionally experience the glory of a disconnected life. I figure by that time, the worst thing that could happen is my avatar getting stabbed in the virtual hand with a pencil shaped cursor.

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness …

Dickens’ opening line in a Tale of Two Cities aptly describes the way I feel about the spread of Facebook. Moments after the announcement of the new social platform, I was already seeing what articles had been read by friends when I was at the CNN site, and what movies were liked by my social circle on IMDB. Every founder of every startup with even a hint of social ambition has imagined his product spread across the web like Facebook is today. This is the race to create the broadest sharing platform and unlock the social web’s holy grail.

And right now, Facebook is winning the race. Hundreds of millions of users are sharing where they go, who they know and what they like. This newly distributed social playground and marketing goldmine is big, powerful and possibly the most significant product to hit the internet since a few engineers thought to themselves, “Browsing is pretty cool, but wouldn’t search be even better?”

That’s my take as an internet investor and entrepreneur. My take as an internet civilian is a little different. In some cases, I find the data about what my friends have shared useful. I can see the benefit of knowing that on Yelp, my friend David “liked” the restaurant Papalote in San Francisco. There’s also probably some value in being forewarned that on IMDB he also “liked” the 1987 flick Spaceballs.

So yes, I do care what my friend David likes. In the last decade, I haven’t made a major consumer electronics purchase without checking with him first. And in general, my love for him is completely unconditional.

That said, I’m not sure I want to open up my morning newspaper and find him inside. Sometimes I really want to know what David likes. Sometimes I really like to spend time away from David and the rest of my extended social network. I am amazed that Facebook is powerful enough to tell me that David read a certain article in the Washington Post this morning. But in the moment, I am distracted by that information. I still want to be able to curl up with my virtual newspaper and read it by myself, and maybe even serendipitously stumble across an article now and then.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg described his growing suite of tools by explaining: “We are building a Web where the default is social.” That makes total sense. The web should default to social. It’s a network after all. The problem is that the web is everywhere. And I don’t want every aspect of my life to be social. How can I have a moment to quietly think when I’m in a room filled with my four hundred million closest friends?

I know the sharing stuff is easy enough to turn on and off. But I am convinced that it will be increasingly difficult to shut out the noise. That’s certainly been the case with every other piece of technology – from email to texting to Twitter – that’s entered our lives in recent years.

I am in awe of the social graph and the power of sharing. But I am worried about group think and a growing inability to be alone. I worry that someday my entire world will be shared, annotated and generally infringed upon by everyone I’ve ever met (and maybe a few hundred million folks I haven’t).

I started this confession with a famous first line from a novel. I’ll end it with a look at how the experience of some other famous first lines may be altered for future readers if the trend towards being always-on and always-sharing and always-Facebooked continues.

Love in the Time of Cholera
It was inevitable: the scent of bitter almonds always reminded him of the fate of unrequited love.
371 people like almonds

Moby Dick
Call me Ishmael.
Herman has changed his username to Ishmael

The Stranger
Mother died today.
42 people like this

Wide Sargasso Sea
They say when trouble comes close ranks, and so the white people did.
Edward, Annette and 1.3 billion others  joined  group “White People”

Pride and Prejudice
It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.
Bingley changed his Relationship Status to Single

The Old Man and the Sea
He was an old man who fished alone in a skiff in the Gulf Stream and he had gone eighty-four days now without taking a fish.
Block Santiago or the Fishville application

Invisible Man
I am an invisible man.
Ralph Ellison just quit Facebook

Everything I know about internet privacy I learned from Curb Your Enthusiasm.

A season one episode of that show begins with Larry David’s best friend Jeff lying in a hospital bed just prior to going under for some serious surgery. He calls Larry to his bedside, hands him a key to his house and tells him where to find his porn collection. In a closet next to the TV there is a linen closet where eight adult tapes and some magazines are hidden behind a sliding wooden door. Jeff tells Larry that he wants him to retrieve this collection while he is in surgery just in case something goes wrong and he doesn’t make it. His wife, he explains, “is not a big fan of the porn.”

In the same episode, Larry uses a landline telephone, takes notes with a pencil and paper and asks someone to fax him directions. Times have changed. But Jeff’s concern for privacy might be more applicable than ever.

If Jeff was lying in a hospital bed today and had some things to hide, would he even know where to begin? More and more often, our worldly or private possessions – from porn, to passwords, to bank accounts, to photos, to blog posts and status updates – are not hidden in secret compartments or under our mattresses. They’re in the cloud. And if Jeff is anything like the rest of us, he probably hasn’t given a whole lot of thought to the legal or privacy related issues connected to moving his life online.

From a legal perspective, Jeff’s privacy was lot more secure in the back of his linen closet. The data you store on servers hosted by Google, Microsoft and others is subject to the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, which hasn’t been updated since 1986. Law enforcement officials merely need a subpoena (as opposed to a warrant) to get one of the online giants to give up your personal data. Google and Microsoft know this is a problem which is why they’ve teamed with other corporations and advocacy groups to urge lawmakers to get with the times.

“The U.S. Constitution protects data in your home and on your PC very strongly,” said Mike Hintze, an associate general counsel at Microsoft.

“We don’t believe that the balance between privacy and law enforcement should be fundamentally turned on its head,” Mr. Hintze added, simply because people now choose to store documents online rather than in their homes.

Our laws are lagging behind technology. And our personal concern for these issues could be lagging behind both.

Here are just a few items for you and Jeff to consider as anything – from the most private data to a drunken tweet – is pushed into the cloud.

- It’s highly unlikely Jeff has ever read the privacy policies or terms of service agreements on any of the sites he visits. For example, fewer than one out of thousand people even glance at the terms of use on an ecommerce site.

- Jeff likely shares small details about himself across several sites. He should note that: “Computer scientists and policy experts say that such seemingly innocuous bits of self-revelation can increasingly be collected and reassembled by computers to help create a picture of a person’s identity, sometimes down to the Social Security number.” Something as seemingly harmless as Jeff’s birthday can ultimately become part of a marketing profile, or one element of a puzzle being pieced together by identity thieves.

- If Jeff has ever used an online coupon, he’d likely be pretty surprised by how much his favorite retailer knows about him.

- While some big companies are concerned about your legal rights when it comes to privacy, it’s important to be aware that many social networking executives think of privacy as something antiquated. And of course, those companies are better off when more of your data is made public to search engines and marketers. That’s why in Confession #16, I wrote that I Never Tell Zuckerberg Anything.

- Jeff might think he’s now surrounded by millions of oversharing kids who don’t care about the sanctity of his porn collection or anything else. Well, recent studies indicate that young people say they are as concerned as the rest of us about privacy. The question is whether our concerns ever have an impact on our behaviors. We’re all sliding head first down the black diamond slope that is realtime, social web. Who has time to think?

- Both Facebook and Twitter are looking to extend Jeff’s sharing and liking to websites across the internet. It could make these sites more social and more personalized. It also means that more site owners and marketers will know about Jeff’s browsing history, what he likes, who he knows, etc.

- Even if he’s not quite ready to worry about web profiling or identity theft, Jeff will likely want to watch his words when he shares messages via Twitter or Facebook. Last week, the Library of Congress anounced they will maintain an archive of every Tweet ever posted. This content will be made searchable by Google. We all might have a lot of explaining to do someday.

- If he wants to give a little more thought to privacy in the age of social networking, Jeff should read Making Sense of Privacy and Publicity, a recent lecture presented by Danah Boyd at SxSW.

These are complicated issues and I offer this handful of links merely as a launching point to start thinking about what we share and where we share it. In the meantime, it might be a good idea to follow Jeff’s lead and keep the really good stuff behind a secret door in your linen closet.

The web has spoiled the plots of hundreds of TV shows on my DVR. And now it has spoiled the novelty of the next iPhone. An Apple employee left a next generation iPhone in a bar, someone found it and sold it Gizmodo. Gizmodo published photos and videos of the upcoming gadget and the details of how the the guy named Gray Powell lost it. And the internet did what the internet does. A blog post and an article here, some status updates and a few hundred thousand Tweets there, and before you know it we’ve all got a series of published opinions on a something we’ve known about for approximately twenty seconds.

We find ourselves in an age of write, don’t think — look, annotate, regurgitate, repeat. Yet we’ve all boarded this realtime, social roller coaster without taking much time to consider the ramifications of our actions. Our behavior is somewhere way out ahead of our consideration of that behavior. In honor of Gray Powell, the man whose lost iPhone set off this firestorm, I’ll call this the internet’s Gray Area where there is seemingly nothing that can come between a man and his publish button. And in this case, any takes, positive or negative, attacking or supportive, merely add to the pile of noise beneath which Gray Powell is now buried.

And where did this perfect storm of oversharing lead us? To the relentless humiliation of one poor dude and the spoiling of an upcoming surprise.

I’m not pointing fingers here. To paraphrase the late Michael Jackson (who knew a thing or two about public ridicule), I’m starting with the man whose reflection I see in my own iPhone. I’m with the masses. Whether I think the guy who found the phone should have given it back to Apple (I do) or whether I think Gizmodo should have published the details about the upcoming phone or how it came into their possession (I don’t) is not really the point. What I’m getting at here is the urgency with which I needed to look at the iPhone prototype and then to share my one hundred forty character take on the matter.

And what was my take? I have no idea, that was hours ago.

As the news spread around the web, some complained about the coverage of Gray Powell. The folks at Gizmodo paused to respond with a Tweet: “thx for the feedback on the How Apple Lost the iPhone piece. edited to show we aren’t picking on the guy, just telling of his honest mistake.” So I guess they edited out the part that included the guy’s name and the part about him losing the iPhone and the part about them publishing a series of stories about the iPhone prototype and the guy who lost it?

On the other hand, Grey Powell now has millions of people visiting his blog and social network pages. Sure, we’re all focused on him because he made a big mistake. But we’re all focused. There are millions of habitual oversharers who would gladly trade a little humiliation to join Gray Powell in the place where so many strive to be; at the fat end of the internet’s spotlight. He’s made it to that rarified zone occupied by the likes of Tila Tequila and the woozy kid who was filmed by his dad on the way home from the dentist.

Gray Powell: Humiliated victim or the latest internet superstar? Maybe that’s the defining principle of life in the Gray Area. There’s often no difference between the two.

In the end, Apple will get the phone back with more buzz than ever and the guy who lost it will probably end up with a guest spot on a late night talk show. And the rest of us can move on to the next realtime story of the moment. By now, we probably already have.

In 1989 I used a payphone next to Madonna. I had just finished college and moved across the country to New York. The city was in the middle of a protracted phone strike. There were no new lines going in, so if I wanted to talk to anyone back home in the Bay Area, I had walk to a corner near Spring and Sixth and drop a handful quarters into the public phone — my ear nearly sprouts fungus at the thought of it now. After spending several weeks in a new city, Madonna’s was the first familiar face I had seen.

I didn’t know anyone. I was a long way from home and I rarely contacted anyone because of the phone strike. It was one of those unique moments in my life when I had the feeling that I could reinvent myself and become anyone.

Over the months, I spent many days and nights just walking the city. New York itself became my best friend. For awhile I was alone and lonely, but eventually I started to establish my new identity, the east coast me — standing clear of subway doors, teaching high school in Crown Heights, scoring a quart of sour pickles at Guss’ on Essex below Delancey. I still remember the first time I walked across the Brooklyn Bridge. I started from the top of the six train steps and ended up three thousand miles from my childhood house, yet as at home as I could be.

This was an era before the internet became an umbilical cord.

If I were a couple decades younger, I’m not sure I could still experience the sense of solitude and liberation I had from the moment I hailed my first cab at JFK. Although I’d still be walking new streets in a different city, I wouldn’t be nearly as alone. I’d be connected to my friends and family. At least in some way, the realtime, social web would anchor me in the same stream of constant status updates and shared photos that enveloped me when I was back home. I’d still have one foot (or at least a couple thumbs) back in the comfort of my digital cocoon.

Two decades after I landed in New York, my nephew is in the throws of making a final choice on which college he will attend. One question he faces is whether he wants to attend school across the country or within an hour of his house. That’s a big question. But I’m not sure it’s nearly as big as it would have been several years ago when there was some truth to the Bruce Springsteen lyric: “When you’re alone you ain’t nothing but alone.”

A question for this era: Is it too much for my nephew to want a few minutes alone with Madonna?

Of course, it’s not just about the big moments that present the potential for self reinvention. It’s about all the gradual erosion of moments once set aside for personal introspection — previously solo-drives in your car that are now interrupted by bluetooth conference calls, or waits in bank lines that are consumed by the latest Tweets, or Facebook updates and podcasts joining you at what used to be a lunch table for one.

In the next year or so, I plan to take my family back to New York. The moment I’m most looking forward to is introducing my young son to the New York me as we get off the six train and walk hand in hand across the Brooklyn Bridge. I just hope that someday he has the opportunity to really let go and walk alone across his own bridge.

Twitter is set to launch an advertising platform that will include the insertion of Promoted Tweets into your search results and eventually into your main stream. Here are a few takes on the new ads.

The Algorithm Will See You Now

Twitter will algorithmically assign the most effective ads to your stream. This targeting will be based on what you Tweet about, who you follow and the general gestalt of your realtime Twitter existence.

That could prove to be upsetting. I know it will in my case. I’m going to be expecting a series of Promoted Tweets from Axe Body Spray, Vans, Quiksilver, and Justin Bieber’s record label. Instead I’ll probably be getting Tweeted at by Cialis, Metamucil and Rogaine.

Will You Click?

I’ve run two search sites (Rollyo and Addictomatic) and I’ve learned that the more advanced the search tool, the less often users will click on ads. My hunch is that most people who use Twitter for search are fairly advanced searchers. More importantly, I’d guess a huge percentage of Twitter queries are ego or brand searches — maybe I’m projecting here, but that’s seems to be the most obvious use case. And people who search for their own names or to track their own brands only care about one thing. They won’t even see the Promoted Tweets. I think the effectiveness of these sponsorships will increase dramatically once they appear in your main stream.

Update: Twitter announced they’re doing about 600 million searches a day (many automated via bots). So obviously there’s dough to be made. I just feel the in-stream stuff will be bigger.

I Found Myself (or was that Shaq?)

The intrusion of ads into my stream seems like a fairly small issue overall. I’m used to having my personal life interrupted by branded content from commercials on TV, to billboards on the bus my son and I ride to school, to Facebook and Gmail ads next to my personal correspondence. On its own, I’m not sure the Twitter ad plan will make that big a dent in a world that is already so heavily sponsored.

But I do think that these Tweets from entities to which you’re not directly related are part of a broader trend that is worth considering. The walls that have naturally formed between different aspects of our lives have been obliterated by the unified stream. I read a relatively personal message from my wife in the same stream of content where I read about Jim Carrey’s breakups or CNN’s latest news out of Afghanistan.

My parents and I have always been news addicts. From the time I was a teenager, my Dad has greeted me with the same series of questions: How’s the market? Is it raining where you are? And what do you think about the latest news on the President? I’m pretty sure my Dad sees me as his real life version of a web portal complete with the latest updates on news, business and weather.

I love talking current events, but the experience does point to the often difficult task of drawing a clear line between what I’ll call the outside world and the experiences and emotions that are directly connected to my own life.

This line was blurred long before the social web came along. But now all of these aspects of one’s life — regardless of their proximity to the actual inner self of the individual — are smashed into one stream filled with personal asides, updates about important life events, global news and the latest musings from the Real Shaq. Now you can add Promoted Tweets to the mix.

And more is on the way.

In response to James Sturm’s I’m Quitting the Internet, I just dropped the following letter in the mailbox.

April 12, 2010

James Sturm
The Center for Cartoon Studies
P.O. Box 125
White River Junction, VT 05001

Mr. Sturm,

I am sending you this message via post as I have recently learned that after feeling overwhelmed by a growing addiction to the internet – obsessive vanity tracking, emailing, Googling, YouTubing, no time for reading, an unnatural and unwarranted sense of urgency, your one good eye going bad, etc – you have embarked on a self-imposed, four month hiatus from all things internet. I came across your writing on the topic via a tweet that led me to a blog post that eventually pointed me to your article on quitting the internet in “Slate Magazine” — only available, as it were, online. (Forgive the use of “as it were” in my last sentence. I assume people used phrases like that back when letters were still sent). In your article, you wrote:

Over the last several years, the Internet has evolved from being a distraction to something that feels more sinister. Even when I am away from the computer I am aware that I AM AWAY FROM MY COMPUTER and am scheming about how to GET BACK ON THE COMPUTER. I’ve tried various strategies to limit my time online: leaving my laptop at my studio when I go home, leaving it at home when I go to my studio, a Saturday moratorium on usage. But nothing has worked for long. More and more hours of my life evaporate in front of YouTube. Supposedly addiction isn’t a moral failing, but it feels as if it is … About a month ago, I started seriously thinking about going offline for an extended period of time. I weighed the pros and cons, and the pros came out on top.

Why didn’t I think of that?

That was my first reaction to your bold move. After all, this is my fifty-third confession about being a sufferer of a very similar addiction. I’ve written about obsessive stat tracking, ignoring my kids, sacrificing my brain, and a general bleary-eyed descent into this widening gulf of realtime, digital quicksand. Yet, I am still here, sharing my thoughts via the very same medium beneath which a decade of my potential has been crushed.

But you’re free. At least for four months. You’re out there chewing on a piece of straw wandering what I imagine to be the tree-lined paths of White River Junction, stopping occasionally to smell a fresh Dandelion (not yet boxed by proflowers.com), or to push your kids in a makeshift tree-swing, or to take a break from reading Whitman aloud to skip some rocks across a still pond.

Everyone I’ve talked to seems supportive of your decision. But none of them hinted that they’d do the same. One fellow web entrepreneur was especially enthusiastic about the idea of disconnecting for a few months (or even a few minutes) and asked me to repeat the name of the site where your article appeared before firing up his Blackberry and sending a related bulk email to his colleagues. We were at a wedding reception at the time.

And then it hit me. You say you’re quitting the internet. But maybe it runs deeper than that and you’re just a quitter.

You’ve taken off across the terrestrial outback with nothing but your offline experiences of self, family, friends, work and a wifi-disabled laptop. But what about the rest of the poor suckers still online – many of whom are following along with you via the very channels you’ve turned off (I won’t tell you how many, because you’d be back checking your stats in no time). Who will lead them now?

At the time of this correspondence, thirty-nine members of the tribe you so selfishly abandoned have left comments on the bottom of your article on Slate. Imagine the desperation of leaving online messages for a guy who just said he’s going offline. This is the equivalent of responding to an obituary with some follow-up questions for its subject.

These people are sick, and you’re gone. You think your healthy transition to a normal, pre-internet existence will provide them with some valuable lessons. Hogwash. They need to be scared straight. They need to be taken into the solitary confinement wing of a maximum security prison and be forced to listen to the aggressive saliva-soaked admonitions of a dude who raced down the same path ahead of them and ended up at rock bottom. Ain’t no Twitter in the joint, punk. (I don’t actually know whether they allow Twitter in prisons but what difference does it make — you can’t Google it anyway.)

I’m that rock bottom dude. And your willingness to go offline isn’t going to make me feel bad about that anymore. I’ve always been willing to put out the extra effort to maintain my early-adopting addiction. More than a decade ago, my wife bought me a huge rear-projection television for our first apartment’s very narrow living room. I was enveloped by its glow and the first forty-five minutes of viewing was exhilarating. But then I realized that being so close to a giant rear-projection television was giving me horrible headaches and projectile motion sickness.

If that were you, I have no doubt you would’ve run back to the store and traded your TV in for a smaller, less immersive model. I sucked it up, went to the corner pharmacy, and scored about three months worth of anti-nausea medicine. Game on. And I’ve been that way ever since. I find a way to let more and more screens invade my life, no matter the cost. Mr. Sturm, it’s a little something called leadership.

So yes, I’m going write long pieces about the dangers of becoming addicted to the pull of the realtime, social web and I’ll deliver them from the heart of SoMa right into the eye of the online storm. That’s where I’m needed. You go ahead and run to your idyllic and idealized world or reading, family, thinking, work, nature, love and laughter. And I’ll be right here like I’ve always been, leading by my bad example of what can happen if things go too far. You can jump ship just when the going gets tough. I’m going out like Thelma and Louise, riding this magic iPad right over the edge of a cliff.

Sincerely,

Dave Pell, Internet Superhero
P.O. Box tweetagewasteland.com

P.S. If this letter somehow inspires you climb back aboard, I’ve got plenty of anti-nausea medicine for the both of us.

You may have heard by now that Jim Carrey announced the end of his relationship with Jenny McCarthy via Twitter. He wrote: “Jenny and I have just ended our 5yr relationship. I’m grateful 4 the many blessings we’ve shared and I wish her the very best! S’okay!” Later, McCarthy offered her own tweet on the subject.

And the retweeting began. Soon the news was picked up by journalists (or in some cases they could be called professional retweeters) and the story was everywhere.

My first reaction was that this seemed like an odd forum to be sharing such information – that the man most famous for talking out of his backside was now famous for tweeting out of it.

My second reaction was that I was witnessing — from initial tweet, to first news stories, to confirmations from numerous publicists — yet another example of a celebrity getting out in front of story. With his level of fame, Jim Carrey knew his break-up would be big news. Why not use a direct line of communication to his own built in audience and frame the story in his own words?

You can certainly imagine a clear strategy at work: Dear Media, we’re breaking up. There’s no need to publish a few weeks worth of rumors and speculation. No need to call hundreds of our friends. No need to camp out in front of our house or helicopter above our local dog park. Here’s your story. We’re done. We still dig each other. Oh, and anyone who really cares already knows. So roll presses.

And indeed, the press did run with Carrey’s headline. Every story I saw on the topic included a direct quote of Carrey’s tweet. In many cases, the Twitter angle made the headline.

Here’s the Reuters story: Jim Carrey, Jenny McCarthy Reveal Split on Twitter.

And here’s the AP version: Jim Carrey, Jenny McCarthy announce split in tweet.

It’s entirely possible we’re looking at the future of celebrity-driven media relations.

But then I started wondering. What if this wasn’t just a calculated move to frame what was sure to be a major celebrity news story?

Any of your unfamous friends and followees ever share news of a breakup on Twitter or Facebook? Ever read details about personal tragedies shared by people you barely know? Ever first learn of a pregnancy or a divorce by way of status update?

For millions of people, the body seems to have become a vehicle through which experiences pass from the outside world into a status update. I’d expect a large percentage of breakups among Twitter and Facebook enabled couples to be shared while the typist’s eyes were still blurred by tears. That’s the way a huge segment of society rolls. Live, share. Live, share.

There’s no such thing as TMI, only TMC (Too Many Characters).

So was Carrey perfectly framing what could have been a drawn out and uncomfortable story or was he just sharing a personal experience in a very public forum?

Was he using Twitter to manipulate a receptive public, or has Twitter turned him into one of us?

When I woke up this morning, the last thing I wanted to do was cheat on my laptop.

She accepts me, never complains that I bring her everywhere or that I still type with two fingers and she never tells anyone where she hides my folder of inappropriate links.

And I’m a dirtbag, no better than Tiger Woods and Jesse James. She has lovingly rested upon my lap, year after year, and still there I was, the eighth person in line at my neighborhood Best Buy. Like the rest of the traitors ahead of me, I was there for the new girl. Her name is iPad.

My wife was no better. She was the one who woke our whole family so we could get to Best Buy before they opened. “We’ll make it an adventure. The kids will have fun,” she insisted.

Just before our line began to move, a lady parked her car and walked past us and towards the repair counter with an old Windows laptop under her arm. Sad, surely. But at least there was some loyalty. Not from me though. I slicked back my hair, rubbed a few wrinkles out of my shirt and with both fists, grabbed with gusto my sixty-four gigabyte mistress.

When we got home and I saw the glory of the unboxed machine — sleek, sexy, magnetic — I finally understood how Jennifer must have felt when Angelina came into the picture.

Our toddlers were climbing over my shoulders clambering towards the new toy and asking to see Barbie games and Marvel comics. They were just as mesmerized as we were and they wanted to touch it.

Unlike our old laptops, our kids refused to sit quietly on the couch and accept the neglect. “Try, try” cried my daughter. “Let me have a turn,” begged my son.

“Hold on!” I yelled impatiently. “Dadda is syncing! It’s not ready.”

My wife got more creative, “If you guys go and take your naps right now, then when you wake up we can watch movies, eat cake and ice cream, dress up in costumes and have a big party. But only if you go to sleep right now.”

It was 9:37am.

Finally we downloaded some apps and test drove our newest family member. The keyboard operated better than expected when we typed our names into the Birthday Cake app. Look at the HD quality of our Netflix movies!

And then we showed Winnie the Pooh to our kids. “Look kids, I can turn it sideways and see two facing pages like a real book and if I hit this letter the font gets bigger.”

But they didn’t understand. They actually wanted us to read Winnie the Pooh to them. We’re early adopters I tried to explain. We don’t have time to read.

I looked over at my wife as she downloaded another fifty bucks worth of apps, her face aglow in the iPad.

“Are you crying?” I asked.

“No,” she answered. “I just haven’t blinked since we opened the box.” Then she sighed. “I hate to say it, but I wish they came out with this before we had kids.”

I barely heard her. I wanted my turn. Sensing that both she and the kids might be in danger, my wife took them upstairs. And there we were. Just the two of us.

I wanted to quickly fire up the on-screen keyboard and start making 140 character pronouncements about what this device means for the future of newspapers, magazines, gaming, movies, television, computing, reading, writing, communicating and life itself, but then I realized it had already been out in the marketplace for nearly fifty-one minutes. It was way too late to still have a meaningful opinion on any of these topics.

And besides, who could think of others with us finally alone. I poured a glass of bubbly. I dribbled a handful of rose petals on the corner seat of my couch and rested her upon them. I pressed play on my Barry White Pandora station. I opened Safari and pulled up one of my favorite old blog posts. I leaned in. And yes. I kissed her. And it felt good. Her battery runs cool, but she felt hot in my hands.

But then I stopped. I came to my senses. I started to download games, children’s books and educational apps. I deleted any access to email, Twitter or Facebook. I knew at that moment I was being pulled back towards my family. Maybe I could have both, a functional family and an iPad?

I don’t know where this story will end (or even whether I will read it vertically or horizontally). For what it’s worth, I’m back typing this post on my old laptop with her creaky keyboard. And while we can pretend everything is the same, she saw me download those iBooks. So we both know who I’m taking to bed with me tonight.