I forget to read in my rush to share

Sharing is in overdrive. We just love to share. And the internet is a sharing machine. We get it. No surprise - the smarter folks have been saying it for a long time.

I hate to admit it, but partly why I'm using twitter so much these days is most of my blog posts were simply sharing other people's stuff. I do this now with far less effort on twitter. There are other reasons, but this is a big one. I'll continue to blog, but at a slower pace.

More worrying is I find myself sharing stuff even before I've finished reading it. How stupid is this? It is almost like I'm in such a rush to share something that I'm forgetting to enjoy, well, the thing. I've re-tweeted things with links that I haven't even clicked on. Oh god. I know there is intrinsic enjoyment in sharing with people but the sharing shouldn't take over the content, right? Is it time to slow down, switch off and read a book?

Well, apparently we're not good at the whole book thing anymore. Nicholas Carr wrote one recently called The Shallows, where he spoke about how the internet changes the way we read, think and remember. And how we struggle to read books without the distraction of hyperlinks jumping off the page.

All sounded too familiar.