I've noticed an alarming trend lately with my computer use. I'm spending an increasing amount of time deleting spam and trying to make my real message interaction more appropriate so I can move on to more relevant activities in my life like exercising and spending time with the family. You may have realized this same problem with your technology use: the more you use technology, the more "junk mail" you get and the more social interactions you have, the more people want to grab your attention to their agenda which is usually to sell you something.

I am, by nature, a social person. However, I want to choose my interaction time with others and not be avalanched by requests for my time and resources. I'm already spending way too much time attached to a keyboard and sitting in a chair for so long isn't healthy for the human body - gravity wins every time. Lately I've succumbed to the trend to reach out and "touch" others or at least put myself in a position to be "touched" by others online. Popular sites like Twitter, Facebook, MySpace and YouTube, besides being fun entertainment and ways to socialize, are huge time suckers and as you use them, they suck you in even further because more and more people want to reach out to you.

Where does it end? Will we need to have implants with brain prods so our every thoughts can be broadcast to the rest of the miasma? How soon before the spammers overwhelm that space as well? Why do we tolerate this behaviour and pass it off as "normal" and something to be ignored? Our time is one of our most valuable resources, priceless to those of us who are reaching the mid-century mark and want to use this resource wisely. Is it time to pull the plug? Just when the online interaction and social messaging revolution is becoming so mainstream that if you're not involved, you're left out of the conversation and won't be able to catch up?

We need to have better controls over our time thieves. They're stealing our lives from under our fingertips. Encourage your representatives in government to research the situation and crack down on the spammers and privacy pirates. Don't forward the chain letters and requests for funding and other peoples'' ideas of humor that aren't really that funny. This includes the cute photos that are larger than 1MB sent through email! Post them on a photo web site and send the link instead. Otherwise, we'll all end up in a never ending loop of forwards and deletes, waiting for downloads that don't matter, wasting our lives in front of a screen when the real world is outside the Windows.