I like that you "curl up with RSS" at night; great personal end to the article. What I like about RSS is that you aren't notified anytime you have, say, a new item in your feed. I like to read my feed items on my own terms (usually during lunch at work).

As for notifications, I have a love/hate relationship. I love knowing when I have replies from friends on twitter, but when I was a sysadmin and received email alerts that meant horrible things were happening at early hours in the morning and my blackberry light would flash until I looked at it. I hated those, and giving that blackberry back was by far the best part of the job. I think you were missing a bit about how when you're notified about things you need to know but don't want to know, notifications are the worst thing in the world.