A Penn State study suggests that when college students text in socially inappropriate situations, it's not necessarily because they think it's OK to do it:

Trained as an evolutionary psychologist, Harrison suggests that the forces of natural selection may play a part in creating [the urge to text]. The buzzes and flashing lights of texting devices may signal opportunities or threats that cause people to pay less attention to their present environment and consider the future.

College students aren't the only demographic of our species with an innate inability to ignore notifications. Look at any boardroom, PTA meeting, or interstate to find adults enslaved to their information inhalers in all the wrong places.

I think "innovations" in the speed of information delivery have peaked. There's just nothing practical to be gained by making more or faster notifications at this point.

It's time to work on forms of communication that satisfy the human need to connect without hacking us through our ancestral wiring. The design of future information systems should prioritize human psychology over technical specifications. It's a seemingly subtle but important distinction: a technologically advanced society is not necessarily a technologically enhanced society.