To Wit: Twittering

The Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton campaigns also post updates on Twitter, though John McCain's has resisted the temptation.

And me? I've begun to use it as a mix of notepad and gossip column, sharing random observations with whoever may read them.

To date, Twitter users have not been troubled by ads or any other evidence of a profit motive.

An about-us page says Twitter "has many appealing opportunities for generating revenue" but wants to build its audience first.

My bet: Expect to see the same Google ads that you spot everywhere else, and soon. 1999's dot-com exuberance vanished long ago.

The real risk, though, is not the failure of this site or others like it. It's that the daily routine of zapping off these short snippets of text will erode your ability to think in complete paragraphs or read anything long enough to require a tap of a page-down key, much less a flip of a page. And as you spend ever-more time recording your exploits -- like a sociologist sentenced to conduct endless field research on himself -- you will abandon all hope of ever living in the moment.

That would be bad.

Living with technology, or trying to? E-mail Rob Pegoraro atrobp@washpost.com. Read more athttp://blog.washingtonpost.com/fasterforward/