UCSF neurobiologist Thomas Lewis claims that if we’re not careful, we can trick a part of our brain into thinking that we’re having a real social interaction–something crucial and ancient for human survival–when we actually aren’t. This leads to a stressful (but subconscious) cognitive dissonance, where we’re getting some of what the brain thinks it needs, but not enough to fill that whatever-ineffable-thing-is-scientists-still-haven’t-completely-nailed-but-might-be-smell.

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Kathy Sierra thinks Twitter may be too good. As a Twitter fan, some might say apologist, I completely agree that this dissonance is certainly worth paying attention to.

I’ve (lamely) made the point in casual conversation that Twitter seems to kill, well, some degree of casual conversation (so that we end up having meta conversations about our lack of casual conversations), or, at the very least, obviates some of the need for small talk. I don’t think that this is an inherently bad thing, as someone who, frankly, sucks at small talk, but I do think our connectedness is accelerating much more quickly than our macro, societal ability to deal with it. What do you say to someone you meet at a party whom you also follow on Twitter – you already know the answer to the standard “what’s up” after all.

The rest of Kathy’s post, dealing with Twitter as addiction and attention span, is worth a read.