Many of us—myself included—recently received alerts from banks and major retailers notifying us that our names and e-mail addresses had been “hacked” as a result of an attack on a third-party service used by these businesses to handle e-mail distribution. (Vanguard was not one of the companies affected.)
I wasn’t happy when I was informed, of course, but at least I’m not helpless. And neither are you.
Anytime I forget something, I rationalize that what I’m really doing is clearing out space to allow new information to be stored in my brain. It’s a bit like cleaning off my desk or deleting cookies from my computer.
We Google, we Tweet, we LinkIn, we “friend” each other, and we log on to the Internet at ever-increasing rates.
Findings from the Pew Internet and American Life Project have shown that our current economic woes have carried over into our online activities: In the past year, among American Internet users, 72% of men and 67% of women went online seeking news or advice about coping with the recession. People are conversing through online channels as well: 23% of the U.S. adult population have discussed the recession online.
I’m a list maker. I carry around various lists for different parts of my life, and add and delete as I work my way through the tasks. While much in my life has become digital, I always write these lists out on paper. No digital task lists on my Blackberry or in my e-mail system.
But in other ways, I’ve eliminated a significant amount of paper from my life. One benefit is that fewer important pieces of correspondence have to compete with the avalanche of catalogs that seem to pour into the mailbox with astounding regularity. However, there are risks.
