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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.'"
I agree, too many people out there who are technology whores, and most of their technology never really accomplishes anything useful for them. That is the reason I've given away about 6 PDA's, my talking billy mouth bass, and plenty of stuff from ThinkGeek. I'm much more productive with just my laptop and a wireless connection than an arsenal of useless gear to babysit.
Call me old fashioned, but I still thrive on human interaction regardless of how obsolete it may be these days. Really, given if we all had the money, I'm willing to bet there are more people like me who would get rid of all of their technology and live a more simple, fulfilling life.
"He began to have relationship difficulties at work because he used e-mail, at one point, to communicate everything to his employees, be it good or bad."
This quote from the article makes me wonder whether we're reading too much into it. This is someone who replaced face to face communication with his employees. That's not a problem with technology: that's him being irrespsonsible.
I think (hope) that we all know there's a time and place for technology. Things like employee appraisals and agreeing big pieces of work should really be done face to face.
The question that we thought was being answered was whether having more technological gadgets would create problems for people in themselves?
I'm in the camp who believe that technology actually improves relationships when used appropriately, rather than damages him.
Friends overseas? It's a shame they're not here, but I can use ICQ to keep in touch with them.
Feel like a drink? I can call around my friends to see who's around.
Really want the obnoxious sex-mad guy to come? Just snap a photo/video of the cute girl next to you and he'll be along in a jiffy.
People can do more, in less time, with more people.
Everyone wins. Especially the communications companies.
You know, when I started my career in IT, I was the happy helpful SysAdmin. I would cheerfully respond to request after request because I loved helping my fellow employees have a positive computing experience.
I never understood why people always thought SysAdmins were grumpy and belligerent.
However, now after a decade of thankless shit-catching, I am that grumpy and belligerent SysAdmin who believes that users are a fucking plague of idiots set loose in Biblical proportions upon my otherwise Utopian computer networks.
Comments such as "your message titled 'Virus Warning - Happy New Year' had the word 'Virus' in it, so I deleted it to be safe, but then I opened the next one that had an attachment called 'Happy New Year'. Now my computer doesn't work right..." (honest-to-God true story) have made me tend to side with the machines while watching such movies as "Terminator" and "Matrix", and to create tools named for the Borg which enforce draconian administration of my networks.
Are we anti-social because of the machines, or because people are morons?
I have something in common with Stephen Hawking...
People have been criticising new technology for a long time.
For example, about 150 years ago, someone said how young women should not ride bicycles because it made them less attractive, had bad effects on their health & fertility and gave them grumpy looking faces.
More recently, it was forecast that telephones would cause people to loose touch with their friends and family. ffs Many people here only contact their family on the phone.
Up to the present, they said that children who played with their PC and consoles would be less able and mentally active than children who didn't. Then they realised that the kids who "didn't" were all on the couch watching TV. Any kid who was online or playing games was actually using their brain.
Conclusion?
People have been moaning about new ideas, music and technology for a very long time. I'm sure Aristotle had something to say on the matter and if his statement was put into a modern paper, nobody would notice. (if it was translated first!)
I'll see your Constitution and raise you a Queen.
I'm certainly not going to be one of those folks who says an immediate 'yes' or 'no' to the question of technology turning us into things that we all know we're perfectly capable of without technology, but here is a different spin from some of the comments I've been reading:
(Keep in mind this is based on personal experiences)
- Many people do not own a landline phone unless they have ADSL.
- Many people do not use email anymore due to spam.
- Many people do not use IMs as they are far too many in number, and again have the spam issue.
This means they are often unavailable to a real-time communications, potentially emergency communications.
Some people take it to extremes, avoiding people by not using the methods they know their friends or family use, or by leaving everything to voicemail/email/IMs and simply ignoring messages. It's amazingly easy to ignore people when you have caller ID on your phones too.
Of those who do stay connected (often via every means possible), here are some behaviors I've noticed:
- Many people are getting obsessive about checking email, how much they're getting, and how they can get more without subscribing to mailing lists.
- Talking on the cellphone during obviously inappropriate and/or plain dangerous activities.
- Leaving their status as 'online' on all IMs to maybe increase the chance somebody wants to talk.
- Gotta have a landline, cellphone, PDA, MP3-man, [insert nifty new devices here].
I think more than anything, the current state of technology and communication is forcing the shy folks into hiding, and giving an amazing opportunity for all the people (worthy or not) of all that extra exposure to expose whatever it is they want to.
You're going to get morons. You're going to get brilliant individuals. And their profession really doesn't matter any more than it used to, the pace of life and the introduction of technology is simply accelerating people's reactions too.