Slashdot Mirror
Too Much Tech Diminishes Work Relationships?
Lansdowne writes "The Seattle Times has an article today on Tim Sanders, a Yahoo exec who claims too much technology may be bad for your health. According to Sanders, small groups of engineers who went to completely electronic communication in their workgroups became 'very lonely, depressed, negative, anti-social, brilliant people.'"
Perhaps the "very lonely, depressed, negative, anti-social, brilliant people" are simply attracted to technology, and not necessary a product of it...?
Remember: If you buy anything from spammers, you have a small penis.
First off, the experiment involves the fast reduction of quantity of several social relationships. Socialization is habit-forming. You could get the same effect from taking a small group of pot smokers and switching them to tobacco. Second off, the conclusion is fallacious. The problem supposedly demonstrated is not so much too much technology as too little socialization, though for my money, the problem is the sudden removal of habit-forming face-to-face interpersonal communcication.
Well, they _are_ in engineering. If they were self-actualized, happy, positive, gregarious, blustering idiots they would be in marketing.
I work at a large web hosting company. We got a lot of bright people working for us that most of soceity would see as introverted. We got people locked away in secure rooms for most of their shift, etc - the human part is what makes working there a good thing. We are a very social company in the hallways, meeting areas, etc. Most people (including myself) say that they have very good friends at work, but few outside its walls. To a varying degree, we are a big 400 person family where I work - I think people (ok, myself) need to have the human interaction in order to maintain themselves. Technology roxxors, but there needs to be people to talk to, even if it is anime or what level your 3rd edition Ranger is.
Eat recycled food - it's good for the environment, and OK for you.
I think the problem here is that workers who work alone (with the help of a computer) become lonely. Makes sense. But that is a problem with the surroundings, not with the computer.
I work at the university, couple of hours per day at a computer. Still, the co-workes and I have lunch together, take the time off to grab a coffee, or just wander over into the room next door to have a chat.
So if you feel lonely/depressed, try to work with a group of people (you like - that, of course, is a prerequisite), close to them, maybe in the same room.
And... maybe... don't reload the Slashdot page every minute! (SCNR)
My cats ate my karma. They also wrote this comment.
Further, isolating yourself from people will actually make you are *worse* IT employee or engineer. Why? Because you forget how to put yourself in other people's shoes. By not doing that, you end up designing tools, devices, or software that are counter-intuitive and difficult for people to use. Raise your hand if you've never asked yourself "WHY did they design this gizmo/software this way? It's stupid!"
I'm currently struggling with similar burn-out at work as mentioned in the article. Everyone is so in love with the idea of technology, they've lost sight of whether or not adopting a new technology would actually be beneficial in the longterm. They believe that everything would be "so much better" if it ran on computers, and that's just not the case. I spend hours taking care of servers, networks, software, etc. that I forget why I'm even doing this in the first place and stop caring about the users. After all, I never see any of them.
just my $.02 blue
If I want you to drop everything and service me, I am superior.
If I am talking and you are writing, I am superior. Think old time boss and secretary. Boss talks, secretary takes dictation.
Dominance games are usually the worst means of communicating anything other than who is dominant.
Suppose a person who has an emotional need
to establish dominance over others also likes tech toys? There are lots of these people. They buy the latest toy just because it is the latest toy. They have an emotional need to have something before other people have it.
But those toys don't give them the dominance feedback that they also need. They play with their toys and the discover there is something missing that the toys aren't providing.
Get therapy. Find out why you want the newest toys. Find out why using them makes you feel "isolated" and "alone".
I'll send email to someone sitting right next to me. But only if I think he's busy on a project and wouldn't like to be interrupted or if I can more clearly express myself in an email (or to cover my ass by having a digital record).
This isn't about technology. This is about people interacting with other people.