Frankie says Relax...

L. Gordon Crovitz has a WSJ piece about how humans will survive and adapt to new technologies like Twitter. I agree. For me, however, there are some caveats to Web 2.0 technologies so I offer a few more thoughts:

1. Information literacy is critical. Many young people still do not grasp the importance of critical thinking skills when evaluating information.

2. Twitter and social networking are revolutionary from the perspective of how (not what) we seek. Instead of searching, which was the standard just 4 years ago (pull), we now get information from our social or work network (push).

3. It will be interesting to see whether the deep thinking required for innovation or revolutionary ideas is impacted by our multi-tasking tendencies. Will creative thinkers still be able to have "Aha" moments...or will the buzzing of the blackberry kill these opportunities?

4. Younger workers don't see the situation as info overload. They call it life. People like me frame it as info overload based on the limited quantity of information that was available to me when I entered the workforce in the late 80's. I suspect that millennials will transition just fine into a transparent work/play relationship.

5. Human adaptation is the most important aspect of Web 2.0. We have adapted what Jurgen Habermas calls tools, techniques and technology to take us places well beyond what the inventors ever imagined.

Optimism should be the order of the day. But let's not get too giddy. There is still a lot of work to be done in socio-technical areas of organizations and companies.