There are benefits to the public at large reporting what’s going on in their lives, even reporting the news, and being first on the scene to take photographs, but mostly… it’s just NOISE.

As the above graphic shows, the time spent between interruptions continues to decline.  As we continue to push to stay up to date, we are getting less and less accomplished.

Linda Stone was quoted as saying:

“To pay continuous partial attention is to pay partial attention — CONTINUOUSLY. It is motivated by a desire to be a LIVE node on the network. Another way of saying this is that we want to connect and be connected. We want to effectively scan for opportunity and optimize for the best opportunities, activities, and contacts, in any given moment. To be busy, to be connected, is to be alive, to be recognized, and to matter.

We pay continuous partial attention in an effort NOT TO MISS ANYTHING. It is an always-on, anywhere, anytime, any place behavior that involves an artificial sense of constant crisis. We are always in high alert when we pay continuous partial attention. This artificial sense of constant crisis is more typical of continuous partial attention than it is of multi-tasking.”

In an era where we’re so desperate not to miss anything, we’re missing the big picture. Twitter will continue to be a vehicle for the passage of knowledge, but as the site progresses I see it tweaked, refined, and culled, so that the information provided is relevant and useful…. Not that Joe Schmo has the flu.

Someday we’ll look back at Twitter as the Message Board of it’s day.  Twitter gets us all involved, but for now it’s TOO LOUD! For now, there’s no ancillary site that turns down the volume enough for me to tune in.

So what does the future of Twitter look like? There are hundreds of possibilities, but until we get there… please turn down the noise. I’ve got work to do.

* * * UPDATE * * * It Gets WORSE! Twitter is going to a “Live Stream” by Q1 2009.