Ahh, Moore's Law. Thank goodness for it. Moore's Law says the speed of chips and storage capacity double as they get shrink in physical size and get cheaper. Therefore, everyone benefits. This includes consumers/users and developers/producers (which frequently overlap in this new era). It gives rise to new services like Twitter.
However, there's a serious catch. Your brain does not obey Moore's Law. It's aided by it, for sure. But the truth is. there's only so much you can pack in there. That's why David Allen sells so many Getting Things Done books.
Typically, new media doesn't replace old. Media consumption is an additive process. We still go to the movies. We watch TV. We IM. We email. We read blogs. We listen to podcasts. We micro blog on Twitter. But sooner or later it's all going to hit a wall. Ask anyone who received 100+ SMSes this weekend as Twitter tipped the tuna at the SXSW conference. This influx was on top of all of the usual barrage of calls, feeds, IMs and emails that already fill every nook and cranny of our lives.
To cope, we've developed a defense mechanism - what Linda Stone calls Continuous Partial Attention. The content industry has responded by chunking things down for us into snacks that complement the meal. That's smart. I told marketers to do the same. However, something at some point has to give. The only way out is perhaps with tools that make things easier for us.
That brings me back to Twitter. Despite it's lack of management/search features, Twitter is downright addicting. I love it. It's brevity lets me blog more actively and at the same time engage in real-time conversations with my "followers" (as they call it). If things have seemed a little quieter over here, it's because I have been busier over there. (Here's my Twitter feed)
Now, here's where it gets interesting. Will people spend less time writing or reading blogs and more time Twittering? I posed this question on Twitter and got a resounding no. I am not so sure.
What about one's Technorati link authority? It feels far less relevant now given the newfound pulls on our attention. All of these networks measure friends and connections, not links. This is the emerging currency of influence, just as it is in the physical world.
All of these are big questions with lots of grey. What I believe, however, is that our attention span will hit a wall. It's why people migrate from site to site and few have staying power (Geocities, Friendster? Exactly). If Twitter continues its meteoric rise, then we may well be witnessing a changing of the guard. That doesn't mean blogging as we know it will go away. But it will surely morph in Twitter's wake if a big shift is underway.
