It is the malady of modernity. We have gone from the Iron Age to the Industrial Age to the Information Age to the Age of Interruption. All we do now is interrupt each other or ourselves with instant messages, e-mail, spam or cellphone rings. Who can think or write or innovate under such conditions ? One wonders whether the Age of Interruption will lead to a decline in civilization – as ideas and attention spans shrink and we all get diagnosed with some version of Attention Deficit Disorder
- Thomas Friedman

I’m glad to have found this piece of text in the latest Dutch magazine “Informatie” (Information). It perfectly describes my irritations of meaningless instant messaging. Sometimes I wonder how some people of my school can leave their msn the whole day on.  When I then turn online, it only takes couple of minutes before they start shooting stupid questions or boring Hey how are you’s. A collegue student that I was working with the last couple of months even asked me if I could give him both my msn, icq and skype.

The magazine concludes that companies should adapt their systems to this new type of communication. Will it improve teamwork ? Or will it decrease the attention ? In my case it’s the latter.