23 Things Number 11

I signed up for Yahoo's instant messaging service (I already had an account so it was easy and I'm being lazy) and my username is alexisackel. I haven't actually IMed anyone yet. I do wonder if all this technology is more distracting than useful sometimes. Between Facebook, Twitter, IM, email, cell phones, etc. it seems like we are more and more expected to be available all the time. It is increasingly possible for someone to contact us every moment of our lives. In some way, this feels like a loss of freedom to me--a loss of anonymity. Perhaps this is simply because I am a rather solitary person but getting away from everyone I know is sometime liberating for me. But what happens when the people you know can always find you? However, unlike some of the other Web 2.0 applications, I do see how IMing could be succesfully integrated into a library setting. I know a lot of reference librarians already use this application so that distance users can IM reference questions.