Many of you posted questions in the comments, and having to keep checking back to see if anyone has posted a reply can be tedious and time-consuming. Instead, you can now subscribe to a comment thread when you post a reply; any subsequent comments will generate a notification that is e-mailed to you, keeping you up to date. The e-mail will also contain a link to where you can manage all the threads you are subscribed to and remove yourself from any subscriptions, so you have full control over what e-mails you receive. So don’t be afraid to use this feature!

The feature is disabled/unchecked by default until you enable it. This means it is purely an opt-in subscription, to prevent connotations of spam, which we all hate. I have tried it out and it appears to be working, but let me know if you have any problems.

Future changes

I had considered going with a third-party/centralized fully-featured commenting system like DISQUS or IntenseDebate, since they offered other nice things such as threading, replying and much more user control over things. Additionally, the idea of your comments on one blog being part of your overall “identity” on the web expands the discussion and appeals to many active participants. From what I’ve seen of DISQUS on other sites, it appears to be very appealing.

However, I wasn’t sure of what direction things would move in after moving to a third-party commenting system, or what would happen to comments stored there. Recently, IntenseDebate was acquired by Automattic, the startup behind WordPress.com and the open source WordPress project, which of course powers this blog.

Since then, IntenseDebate has become an invite-only service. (if only temporarily) One would expect tighter integration with WordPress.com and IntenseDebate, but I’m not sure how this will affect the standalone WordPress with respect to whether IntenseDebate will work “better” with it than DISQUS. I am going to wait a while to see how this all plays out before making a move, but I expect to move to one of these systems in the future

Of course, this is an extreme example, and is not indicative of most situations. But certainly all of these devices are affecting the way we interact with each other and get work done. In fact, I think that overuse of these devices and their “always on, always connected” nature can lead to something I like to call Constant Partial Attention. This is a state where you are alert, but because you are multitasking between so many different jobs, you aren’t as productive as you could be.

Not a technology hater

Now, don’t get me wrong - I am not hatin’ on technology. Far from it, I am a geek at heart, and have spent considerable time learning about all things related to technology. I will admit that there are definite benefits to having a cellphone or other communication device. (Even though I still don’t have one) The danger comes from overuse of these devices to the point where they’re being used for no reason. This creates the constant partial attention situation.

For example, at university I have two computers, my desktop PC and my laptop. The laptop’s used for work and portability, and the PC for gaming, since it’s far cheaper to build a desktop gaming rig than buy a gaming laptop. However, when I’m at home, I have both of them in front of me, so that I can use either at will. You might think that this could improve productivity (at least I thought that it would), but in reality it often made me less productive. The times that I had to use both at the same time were more than offset by the times that I found myself uselessly switching between two computers. Overall, work is much better accomplished on one computer, rather than two, and that is why I will be switching back to a single desktop now that I’m done school.

Multitasking?

Now, that was somewhat of an extreme example as well, but it does illustrate my point. Carrying around a BlackBerry or cellphone can be like having that second system always at your side. Sure, you could say that you’re just multitasking, but there are studies that claim that multitasking can actually be less time-effective. This has the opposite effect of the expected increase in productivity from multitasking. I interpret this as the effect of constant partial attention, and I believe that as devices allow us to be more connected, more of the time, this has the potential to increase.