Why people hate blogs, twitter, delicious, facebook, etc.

OK, I've set up my blog, linked to del.i.cious (can't people just WRITE without all these cute little symbols that have to be exactly reproduced????), opened a twitter account, read and written in discussion board, pondered my avatar, failed to find a cute name or picture, discovered I couldn't tell if my tweet went anywhere, tried to figure out how to follow my student blogs, got lost (should I follow in Google, what's rss, I don't want to open a Yahoo account or any other new thing), ate an entire roll of Girl Scout thin mints to sustain myself, and discovered I had spent three hours on the computer without having yet read a single student blog.

This is progress, right? Like when I spend two hours putting just the right pictures and backgrounds on my climate powerpoints instead of spending two hours reading the most recent updates to climate science?

As it happens, I'm also part of a committee pondering best ways to evaluate teaching and I just read an email quoting a very distinguished teacher that "Teaching is 15% content and 85% theater." I have frequently been told that academia is all about "the combat of ideas," but sometimes I think academics is really about letting the loudest voice, the wittiest speaker, the most confident presence win. I know we have to engage people to teach them, but is listener enjoyment really the measure of learning? Is the best blogger, the fastest tweeter always the voice that needs to be heard? What if the most important idea I need to know is only found by spending hours with Plato or Isaiah or Robert Frost or Feynman?

The fact is, there are 24 hours in the day. I would like to spend 8 of them sleeping and another 2 eating. I teach for 4 more. That leaves me with 10 hours to read, prepare lessons, write profound articles, grade papers, and, if I'm lucky, visit with friends and family. Computers are great--I don't think I could live without google, and heaven forbid I go back to typing and whiting out--but help! Who is really in charge of my life?