BLOGGING: FAD

Over at Wanderlust, Neha (of scholarship and governor’s award fame) has written a post about her personal discovery of addiction to blogging, and how it has changed her life. Honest and concerned, Neha questions the effects on her future, and how blogging changes not only writing eloquence and opportunity, but weaves its insidious web into all aspects of our personal lives.

Obviously, as technology advances the inevitable impact on society brings problems as well as progress. Enter the psychological studies, and we come up with a new plague on man: FAD – Focus Attention Disorder. This will most likely be the next label applied to those who suffer from lack of attention span beyond their weblogging community.

In a bitter twist of irony, FAD negates previous theories of weblogging as only a passing trend. I believe that there lies hidden a growing percentage of society, the créme-de-la-créme of the writing world, who will, by the year 2006, fall victim to this malady. Partially responsible for the rise in cases are English Professors*, anxious to impart knowledge and enthusiasm to college students by introducing new methods of learning that they themselves are seriously researching and enjoying, and who are demanding a new level of excellence by introducing the weblogging concept. With internet access in classrooms, opportunity for exposure is available to all, and time will only tell the extent of its effects.

Are we creating a society of writers, or are writers creating a society?

* Neat trick here, but there must be a better way of linking 3 websites within one word.