Um, Like, Twittering About Your Boss Can, Like, Get You Fired?

I've often been slightly baffled by younger friends of mine who would post Facebook updates decrying their work or boss or announcing to the world that they were messing around at work. Today Congressional Staffers got busted for going a step further -- twittering that their boss was a "pussy" among other things: TPM. How can they not know that they might get caught for this? Did they even care? 

I have had many interesting discussions with my students about this and one of the potentially fascinating side-effects of our technologically infested world today is a lack of what some have called "presence." An old adage says that being present is the key to a happy life. To actually commit to being in the moment, to actually listen to others, to fully embrace what is happening in front of you, to notice the nuances of your existence. All of these can lead to a happier, more fulfilling life (in theory), as you push aside the anxiety, envy, fear and even hope that too often undermine our ability to enjoy our lives. Yet today Generation M rarely is present in any moment, as they are listening to their Ipod, playing with their laptop or Ipad, on their Iphone, watching TV or a movie, or some combination of all of these. They might be in class but texting friends about how boring that class is, doing homework while watching their favorite show, hanging out with a friend while communicating with another or out at night while updating the world about the events as they unfold. The question becomes what this does to our interaction with the world?

In a mediated world, where everyone is essentially "Living Out Loud" this appears to be the reaction of the young who have grown up in this world. If we are constantly watching the lives of others on reality television, internet sites and in the celebrity news, why wouldn't we start to broadcast our own lives in real time? Really we are only a few steps away from EdTV or The Truman Show. But what does this mean for our future? Do we really need to know the daily machinations of a collection of people we call friends? Have we as humans really adapted to only receiving half of the attention of the people in front of us? When we add up all this wasted time, what has been left behind? And mostly importantly, at least to me, when do people have time to think when they are spending all their time communicating with others?