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Are we too Connected?

Comment a comment by Dwayne Sudduth (ldsudduth), published on 10 January 2007
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other nerds have left 8 comments below

As a worker in the IT industry, I have to wonder if we’re too connected. Surrounding me in the company where I work every day are iPods. In fact, I think (other than the CEO/Owner) I’m the only person in the office without an iPod. Nor do I own a ‘smart phone’. I get paged if I have a problem with a server, and I can connect from the outside to look at the servers I support. I can access my e-mail remotely, so I don’t see the need for a smart phone. Both the CEO and my boss have ‘smart phones’ that get their e-mail routed to them 24×7. Is this truly necessary?

I drive to work daily on ultra-alert because (best guess) between 5-10% of the cars I see on my way are listening to their iPods/MP3 players via earbuds and paying little to no attention to what is occuring around them. Or, conversely, reading their e-mail on their PDA device. I actually quit a company a little over a year ago where we carried Blackberries, and were expected to check and answer e-mail constantly. It’s bad enough having a cellphone as a distraction while driving (let’s be honest, how many of us really do pull over while talking) but at least there you have the option of a hands free handset.

Do we really need to be this connected? Companies have survived for decades without all of this connectivity, maybe we need to rethink and retool and scale back just a bit.

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RE: Are we too Connected? by VnutZ :: NR10

I drive to work daily on ultra-alert because (best guess) between 5-10% of the cars I see on my way are listening to their iPods/MP3 players via earbuds and paying little to no attention to what is occuring around them. Or, conversely, reading their e-mail on their PDA device.

That’s why I have the SK125 PA System installed on my Jeep. When some driver that is distracted by a mobile phone starts veering into my lane – I lay into them. There is a great, split-second look of fear & panic as they regain control of their car. Priceless.

Posted 10 January 2007, Hide, Parent, Reply
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RE: Are we too Connected? by jmarkdavison :: NR5

All the Blackberry does for me is encourage me to spend more time writing personal e-mails during my "morning constitution."

Posted 10 January 2007, Hide, Parent, Reply
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RE: Are we too Connected? by gnifyus :: NR6

I have to admit that I was always someone who had a certain disdain for people who were always on the cell phone, (walking through the supermarket, standing in the checkout line, loading groceries into the car with their head tilted; squeezing the phone between their shoulder and face while they try to lift a bag of cat food….all the while talking, talking, talking……) sorry.

>>Both the CEO and my boss have ‘smart phones’ that get their e-mail routed to them 24×7. Is this truly necessary?
What is going to happen is that it is going to become “necessary” because the number of people who have it will begin to grow until this sort of “instant availability” becomes the norm. I can remember about 10-12 years ago when we started our small machine shop, every so often a customer from a bigger company would ask us if we had e-mail. We didn’t, so they would just put a disk of their design in the mail and no big deal. Eventually we had to get an e-mail address because the question wasn’t “_Do_ you have e-mail?” it was “What is your e-mail?” In other words it became a completely expected thing. This is the way personal connectivity will, (and already has) for some, become.

Posted 10 January 2007, Hide, Parent, Reply
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RE: Are we too Connected? by Xtremegene :: NR4

I also question the point of having Blackberry-like access to one’s email all day. If an email were really that important and one needed instant communication, why not use a (cell) phone? I find it highly unlikely that e-mail would be the only means of communication that one has, especially if you are routing it through a cellular data service. Hello, irony? Using a device for email through a cellular service when one could just use the voice component of it? Granted, minutes on a plan could be a limiting factor here, but I bet it would be cost-effective for at least some people to just ditch paying for data access on a smart device (not to mention paying for the ‘smart’ in the device as well) and get a plan with more cell phone minutes. I do have to add that I still have yet to experience the joys of a Crackberry, so take my rant for whatever it’s worth.

I’ll also add a little of my own fun tech experiences. Trying to negotiate (Houston) highways is a job in itself, so I can’t really imagine how people (like my brother) manage to talk on cell phones, brush their teeth, and brew coffee while driving. I tried just dialing out with my phone while driving and then dropping it to speak on speakerphone, but that still diverted my attention away more than I would have liked. Maybe others have segmented their brain and nervous system so that they can keep track of five things at once (of which only one is fraught with danger). Now, email syncing-wise, I tried installing Yahoo Go! on my pocket pc a month ago and having it sync’ed with my main email account. I did this via wi-fi, and I will admit, it’s pretty cool. I can’t really imagine being hounded with it though, 24/7. It would just make me more ADD by bringing lots more things to my attention during the day.

Posted 11 January 2007, Hide, Parent, Reply

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