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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.'"
'very lonely, depressed, negative, anti-social, brilliant people.' in other words, nothing changed
...I learned from Maxis' The Sims. If your or your Sim's social bar drops too low, bad things happen.
Edward@Tomato - /home/Edward/ man woman
man: no entry for woman in the manual.
"Qua!?"
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.
I have noticed that as I have done most of my work remote this last year (remote desktop technologies instead of onsite visits, IM and e-mail instead of phone discussions) that I have become a surly bugger.
It has started to carry into my regular life: people are interruptions not whatever they used to be...
And here I am posting to slash.
Sig under construction since 1998.
"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.
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.
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...
As many people have already pointed out, there is simply a correlation between technology and unhappy, depressed, anti-social geniuses. This is the easiest mistake a person can make when looking at correlations.
As any beginning psychology student can (should) tell you is that a correlation does not indicate a cause and effect. So, from this, we see that unhappy, depressed, anti-social geniuses use a lot of technology. We have a strong positive correlation between technology and depressed geniuses. It could be that technology causes it, or it could be that depressed geniuses like technology, or it could just be a coincidence.
In order figure out which it is, experiments need to be performed. Observation alone cannot figure this out.
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 work from home. My coworker just IM'd me this link. You think they're trying to tell me something?
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.
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.
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.