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It is easy to become unsettled by privacy-eroding aspects of awareness tools. But there is another — quite different — result of all this incessant updating: a culture of people who know much more about themselves. Many of the avid Twitterers, Flickrers and Facebook users I interviewed described an unexpected side-effect of constant self-disclosure. The act of stopping several times a day to observe what you're feeling or thinking can become, after weeks and weeks, a sort of philosophical act. It's like the Greek dictum to "know thyself," or the therapeutic concept of mindfulness. (Indeed, the question that floats eternally at the top of Twitter's Web site — "What are you doing?" — can come to seem existentially freighted. What are you doing?) Having an audience can make the self-reflection even more acute, since, as my interviewees noted, they're trying to describe their activities in a way that is not only accurate but also interesting to others: the status update as a literary form.

Laura Fitton, the social-media consultant, argues that her constant status updating has made her "a happier person, a calmer person" because the process of, say, describing a horrid morning at work forces her to look at it objectively. "It drags you out of your own head," she added. In an age of awareness, perhaps the person you see most clearly is yourself.

"It's just like living in a village, where it's actually hard to lie because everybody knows the truth already,"

"You need to be able to laugh at yourself sometimes."

'That's who I am,'

Wolfe's three laws of the brave new Web 2.0 world are: Mobile is the new desktop, the home page is dead, and social networks like Facebook and MySpace presage the media company of the future.

No one, and I can't stress this enough, gives a shit about your brand. They care about what user experience you deliver to them. This obtains whether you're in the physical world selling a product, or online serving up content.

The new go-to destination of users won't be home pages but instead will be Web apps. That is, users will access content -- news, blogs, video -- and interact with your (their) communities via apps, hopefully apps that you develop and sell ads around.

The young people using Facebook today are not going to be turning to newspapers in older age for that “social glue”.

Meier has found that an increase in cell-phone availability increases the likelihood (at least perceived by the public) that the government might be overthrown by violent means.

Meier has found that an increase in cell-phone availability increases the likelihood (at least perceived by the public) that the government might be overthrown by violent means.

Researchers at the National Academy of Sciences have found that the lightning pace of media brought on by Facebook feeds and Twitter has made the average person increasingly indifferent to human suffering.

When used in a self-centered fashion, it's one more piece of technology increasing the individualistic streak we see so much in Western culture and making us islands unto ourselves.

It's not a clear-cut question. Used properly, Twitter can be an amazing tool for shrinking our globe, quickening international response and building relationships.