"No one ever just sends an email” is reminiscent of the old slogan, sinister and accurate, of Pringles potato chips: No one can eat just one. You could write just the single email. You could discover the single piece of information you wanted online and then log off. You could make sure that that your blog-reading and clip-watching didn’t encroach on the hours set aside for Tarkovksy and Proust, or that your social networking didn’t get in the way of your face-to-face socializing. No one is stopping you from stopping yourself. It’s just that many users of digital communications technology can’t stop. An inability to log off is hardly the most destructive habit you could acquire, but it seems unlikely there is any more widespread compulsion among the professional middle-class and their children than lingering online."
— Benjamin Kunkel, with whom I do not entirely agree, being quite interesting as he reviews three books I’ll probably read, in n+1.
