The New York Times has an interesting article this week (provided that they didn’t just make it up…). The article is regarding the ever-present nature of communications technology in our lives today. The author writes:
The ubiquity of technology in the lives of executives, other businesspeople and consumers has created a subculture of the Always On — and a brewing tension between productivity and freneticism. For all the efficiency gains that it seemingly provides, the constant stream of data can interrupt not just dinner and family time, but also meetings and creative time, and it can prove very tough to turn off.
I find it funny that people today feel helpless without their cell phones. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not anti-technology (I have a weblog, for crying out loud!), but I find it freeing to go places where no one can reach me. I like to be “on,” but to be “always on” is frightening.
I agree that it is a little bit scary, but I understand how it happens. I sit in front of my computer most of the day trying to figure out how to make things better on our website and I’m attached to the net via dsl so I have so much info at my fingertips. I’ll start looking for an answer to something and then find something else interesting that I could do and then find another and another and so on. By then I’ve forgotten what I started out looking for. It’s amazing how much info out there that is free and helpful, but without some discipline and deliberate steps to put some personal bounderies on it you can end up wasting a lot of time with nothing but trivial disjointed knowledge.