I'm at ETech where everyone is online. There's WiFi everywhere, a Wiki, an IRC channel, lots of blogs. And much like at Gnomedex, I'm pleased and dismayed at the extent of the Internet side channel.

Today I'm particularly aware of another cost of having net access at a conference: attention exhaustion. At a normal conference your attention is divided between talks and hallway chatter. Here you've also got your laptop competing for attention, what with IRC heckling, blogs, blogging, random net surfing, foolishly trying to keep up at work. No wonder I'm so tired!

Life used to be slower.

life
  2004-02-11 04:55 Z