A Bi-focal view: what happened to taking some time to t-h-i-n-k....

I set up a Twitter account a few months back to see if I could derive pleasure or productivity from it. I stopped using it a few weeks later.

It was so tedious, perhaps because I don't use a web-phone but a PC. Things are not live if you're going on once a day like I was.

From what I've seen and heard, many people are addicted to it, and from what I could see on the feeds, most of the tweets are junk. (Perhaps not the political news out of Iran, a few months back, but the what I'm doing now type of scribbles. I don't want to know if anyone is at the dry cleaners.)

I do have a cell phone (since 1993 I've gone through at least six versions, but only for the occasional phone call. I actually don't like talking on the phone all that much and can go days without a call.) While I prefer e-mail and do enjoy going on-line for some amusement, I seem to have missed much of the techno-addictions of the last decade:

• text-ing or sext-ing
  
• uploading pictures (nude or risque) to the web (though I do have benign photos on facebook)
• iPHONES
• iPODS or other portable music pendants
  
• GPS in my car - I think maps are more convenient
  
• bluetooth for my mobile phone
• any video game
• electronic books (I prefer the perfect design of a real book - you know... the kind between two covers)
• Blackberrys - I don't have enough correspondents to justify this.
  

And I'm not even a Luddite, as I've been an early adapter of:

• touch-tone phones (we first had them in Nova Scotia in 1968) - today's young people may not know how to dial a phone
• VCR - a video cassette recorder for the TV - my first one in 1981 cost $1500.00, and had a cord between the remote buttons and the fake wood finish. (My first blank tape cost me $28.00!!!)
• my first computer was an Apple II, purchased in 1984 - home computers were still not all that common then. Have you seen what you can now get for $2,000.00???
  
• CD player - Ted bought one when they were introduced in 1984
• Laser-disk player in late 1980s. We were used to paying $50.00 - $100.00+ for LDs
  
• We had a DVD player almost as soon as they came out - over $700.00 when introduced - now they're given away as freebees!!!
• HDTV - first one in 2004 cost $3,000.00+ (an LCD back-projection... I don't think Sony makes them now)
  

The expression everything old is new again just about sums up my feelings. Blackberrys are today's version of fax machines, but mobile. When fax machines started appearing in all offices rather than in a hub shared among offices, workers dropped what they were doing to answer the fax. It was interpreted as being truly important and definitely urgent; this is where a lot of people are now with instant communication. There is indeed a message, but is there a purpose to the message? Just how can people get anything done when so much time is spent checking berries. I think it takes time to conduct business productively, rather than on the fly. (God help me.. I'm starting to sound like Andy Rooney!)

We all have our cell phone stories of annoyance, but the phones are a wonderful device and do serve a purpose. But talking loudly on the bus isn't really one of them. And I've been at a urinal when the guy next to me is balancing his phone between shoulder and ear, and trying to pee without missing a syllable. (And, no, he didn't wash his hands when he left - just think about that when using someone's phone.) Aside from annoyance is rudeness: it is not a proper use of a mobile phone to be chatting with a friend while going through a supermarket checkout - I think this tends to dehumanize the person working on processing your groceries - don't you?

In the real olden days... you know... about 5 - 10 years ago, friends would get on a bus and talk to each other, or people on their own would read a book or just look out the window, perhaps inadvertently interacting with strangers. But with so many people wired to iPODS, there is an obvious diminishing of sociability. You don't have to love everybody, but some eye contact used to be inevitable. Now, it isn't.

The irony is not lost on me that I'm using a now ubiquitous social networking application, Blogger, to disseminate my thoughts on modern technology, especially communication apps and devices. While I believe in doing a job well, and using technologies to assist me in my work, I do not believe in being forever tethered to the workplace. If you have no down time, then perhaps you're in the wrong job.

I tend to think of iPODS as cocoons of isolation, and Blackberrys et al as squirrel cages of instant communication. Aren't you just spinning your wheels, playing at productivity more so than achieving a satisfying life-work balance?

In the end, even though I'm not anti-technology but anti-all-consuming technology, my skepticism as to the purpose or my cynicism as to the value, may be a generational thing with me. I can touch type on a keyboard, use full sentences, and communicate full concepts - double-spaced and mostly grammatically correct. But I cannot type with my thumbs, and use kewl abbreviations such as LOL, OMG, FWIW, NSFW, with any degree of sincerity or lack of awareness.