David M. Levy, a professor at the Information School at the University of Washington

gave a chilling historical overview of how American society has become enslaved to an ethic of "more-better-faster" and is losing touch with the capacity for reflection and intuitive thinking. In an overweening commitment to constant doing and making, analyzing and thinking (which, let us note, are important human activities), we can too easily close off access to an entire realm of consciousness that is at least as important, our capacity for reflection.

Twitter may be all the rage, but surely there is something pathetic about the ascendance of Twittering as our unstructured, person-to-person social time dwindles away.

 the electronic environment systematically favors "fast time" activities that require instant, urgent responses (email, cell phone calls, etc.)

Levy pointed out that this dynamic has an especially perverse effect in academia