Always On

Baron reveals that online and mobile technologies--including instant messaging, cell phones, multitasking, Facebook, blogs, and wikis--are profoundly influencing how we read and write, speak and listen, but not in the ways we might suppose. She reveals that email, IM, and text messaging have had surprisingly little impact on student writing. More troubling is the myriad ways in which we block incoming IMs and screen incoming calls. Our ability to decide who to talk to, she argues, is likely to be have a lasting influence on the way we communicate with one another. Also, what kind of people will we become if the relationships we form must increasingly compete for our attention with digital media?