Kevin Hartnett on the internet-as-bogeyman:

At a certain point, it seemed like every time my wife and I had friends over the conversation turned to the ways the Web was ruining all of our lives: how it was destroying our productivity, sapping our sex drives, devouring our precious time on earth.

But in 2011, I say enough with all this bellyaching!  The Internet is just a thing that sits on my desk, if it sits anywhere at all. If I close the lid of my laptop, it can’t get me. If I walk outside, it can’t follow me.  Blaming the Internet for the novel I didn’t write is a little like blaming a plush sofa for the marathon I didn’t run.

Exactly. If anything, in 2011, my resolution is to stop searching for scapegoats. If I can’t get as much work as I’d like done this year, if my relationships suffer… well, that’s on me. By conceptualising the internet as “addictive”, it becomes easy for us to abdicate responsibility for our own behaviours.