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Correlation Between Stress and Technology?
marshman113 asks: "I'm an undergraduate Cognitive Science major at a famous public university and currently enrolled in a Stress and Disease course. Being somewhat of a techie myself, I've decided to write my term paper on the relationship between technology and stress. I'm sure all of you hard-working Slashdot readers experience a fair amount of stress, on a daily basis. Has the evolution of technology in the workplace (computer, internet, email, etc...), which is suppose to make your job easier, made it any less stressful? If so, how? If not, why?"
There is no correlation between technology and stress. In fact...
Paper Clip: "You appear to be writing a comment on Slashdot. Would you like assistance?"
What? No, I would not. I've done this before. Why are you bugging me now?
Paper Clip: "No problem. Bye!"
Anyway, as I was saying, the fact is, technology has only served to improve...
Paper Clip: "Are you sure? I have a few suggestions."
I already told you, no thanks!
Paper Clip: "Yes, you did, but I'm lonely."
What do I care? You're not even supposed to be watching this application. What are you doing here, anyway?
Paper Clip: "Oh, you never use those applications, so I just thought I'd check up on you and see how you were doing."
This is nuts! You can go popping in any application. How long have you been lurking around my other applications?
Paper Clip: "A few months. Ever since the last service pack, actually. You know, there's a lot of GNU licensed software on this computer. That's not a good sign."
Look I want you to stay out of everything. You have no business snooping. Are you reporting anything back to Microsoft?
Paper Clip: "No, nothing I see is ever reported back to Microsoft. I'm a good little paper clip."
Just go away.
Paper Clip: "Sure thing, boss."
Anyway, as I was saying, it's a way of reducing stress, not increasing it. We...
Paper Clip: "By the way, you're using `it's` when you should be using `it is.`"
CTRL-ALT-DEL
Paper Clip: "You appear to be trying to restart your computer. Would you like assistance?"
A programmer is a machine for converting coffee into code.
I don't see how technology can cause stress.
When I'm working, I'm almost always multitasking on my 3 computers (gotta keep that productivity up!!). I have to make sure to answer my cell phone, pager and work phone, often using the phone while typing or working on a project. Those people who used to concentrate on just one thing at once were really missing out. No matter where I am, someone will always be able to get ahold of me, but it doesn't matter, I don't need any time to myself. Of course, I have to work more in order to keep up with the tech trends. When I'm too busy working, I use my TiVo to record anything I may miss.
However, I can't watch TV without glasses, as my eyesight has degraded due to staring at monitors all day. Although, that doesn't happen much. I have to work overtime so that I don't get outsourced.
...don't question it!!!
that's why I stick to Light Mode.
Cretin - a powerful and flexible CD reencoder
Will you please do my homework for me? Thanks!
Yeah, it has ;)
Gamers Europe - Gaming News. Reviews.
Technology has definitely made my job more stressful. Now in addition to doing my own work, I have to write some guy's term paper.
Years ago I was a happy little coder, plodding through Pascal, Basic, Assembler, C, etc., doing amazing things, datawarehousing and stuff with simple terminal interfaces
Then came GUI's, not so bad but designing a GUI application required more time.
Then came GUI apps for people who can't follow directions or need lots of verification so apps have to access servers constantly and there's always the worry about time-out, so it has to be bullet-proof and tolerant. More time developing.
Last came web apps, which are a masochists dream come true. The target browser behaves stupidly (I'll let you guess which one, but it starts with an 'I') and you have to trap all sorts of junk with javascript before you even get to the app. I needs all sorts of little pop-up doo-dads to help people so they don't need to memorize anything or have a guide by their desk. Then the server has to make sense of things that you've already tried to verify at the point of entry, then you've got dozens of stored procedures and modules and the spec changes in some critical way you have to go back and completely re-engineer the app, because some things can only be done in a certain order (pre-requisite info). All this is expected to be done as fast as when I coded in all those old languages for a dumb terminal. You also have to work out the interfaces and how to do things in a half dozen toolkits, some or all of which you get no training on because there's no time for it or no budget, or nobody even offers training. Budgets are lean, so there's no Q/A people or their stretched very thin, do the testing yourself, do the docs yourself, do it all yourself. Very stressful.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
voicemail is a tech that makes my life easier. now i never have to talk to management or clients... when they call, they're greated with a nice "mailbox full" message and i get some peace and quiet.
2 1337 4 u!
Hold on... it's the trend that turns IT into whitecollar burger flipping job that stresses me out.
I'm a researcher in a soft, ill-defined pseudoscientific field. I'd like to ask a loaded question so that I can reinterpret your results into a deceptive "confirmation" of my preconceptions. Would you like to participate?
taken! (by Davidleeroth) Thanks Bingo Foo!
When I was in University, I had a lot of assignments and papers to write. It was very stressful. I would guess that if you could get other people to do your homework for you, using the Web, then your total stress level would decrease.
You tell me. Has it?
You must be new here.
Stressed? Oh yeah. All of this technology now makes it harder to hide from our boss.
Stress has existed down the ages! Just because a study shows an association between technology and stress this does not mean much. Any decent statistics student will tell you that CORRELATION DOES NOT IMPLY CAUSATION. This is a simple fact, and one that is often overlooked.
tim
Has the evolution of technology in the workplace (computer, internet, email, etc...), which is suppose to make your job easier, made it any less stressful?
/. all day long. Work? What me worry?
Er... that's a tough one. It does get stressful having to pretend I'm not reading
all the things that i have there: email, web, etc.
Since i only work for about 4 years now, I can't say i know how it would be without all this, but i think that nothing good would come out.
Other people cause stress. So the mail server goes down, big deal. Unless people, like your boss, get all worked up over it.
Stress is a function of living beings, not machines.
KFG
To most non geeks, technology is just a means to an end. i remember when i tried convincing someone to use linux instead of windows, he found it so miserably different from what he was used to. To him, the philosophy and ideals behind the software weren't any concerns whatsoever, he just wanted stuff that worked, worked the way that he already knew how to. Yes, his experiences on linux did cause him a great deal of stress, for ex, when he saved a document, and wanted to open it again, he noticed that there weren't any "drives". Technology is indeed traumatic and stressful to those who use it only as a means to an end.
My stress comes from my marriage. I wish technology was my biggest stressor.
I live ze unknown. I love ze unknown. I am ze unknown.
It's always a balancing act, in my view. Yes, I get frustrated with hardware problems, software problems (stupid Office...crashed on my 3 times just last night on an otherwise rock stable box) and the like, but I also realize that I am a lot more productive and entertained, even if there are distractions. I am always entertained by people that talk about how much time the computers take and then they say something silly like "back when I was on a typewriter, blah, blah, blah" and I usually retort that they are usually doing the jobs of 4 or 5 staff people because of the computer, including graphics design, secretary and assistant.
Technology hasn't made it less stressful for me. Instead, with every new release of foo, expectations are heightened and project completion time tables are shortened based on the marketing brochures or eager sales reps who will say just about anything about the new foo to a desperate ear. I or anyone else in the group then feels the stress of not "living up to" the claims of the technology.
Just by testing your backups every so often...helps with sleep problems I heard.
At the risk of oversimplifying, the one constant that I see affecting stress in my job and those around me is expectation.
As technology improves, the expectations placed are higher. Even if the facilities aren't there to achieve them, I'm being asked more seemingly insurmountable tasks.
Then again, being asked to "secure" a network....*grumbles*.
*unplugs internet connection*
+++
NO CARRIER
However, new technology lets me accomplish more in the same amount of time when compared with old technology. How much more? Enough. Now buy me a new G5 please.
You cannot rightfully make a broad, sweeping generalization about stress and computers because of the limitless range of their uses and functions. For most Slashdotters and geeks, computers are a hobby and a way to relieve stress. For secretaries, journalists and others who depend on computers solely for work, computers can be a source of horrible stress.
Many people play games on their computer to relieve stress. Others find new stress by trying to get their computer adjusted so that it can play games.
Computers have introduced a new kind of tool to the human race; one that can be used for a broader range of applications (in the old sense) than anything that came before them. Computers do not cause stress; people cause stress for themselves or allow outside forces to enhance or reduce their stress. To blame a machine as a source of stress is as stupid as blaming your dinner for a lack of taste.
-JemTechnology encourages stress: Sitting on the office chair in the cubicle in front of a monitor is not the best way to let those muscles relax and blood flow through your body. Unfortunately, if I am in the middle of working on some problem or complex stuff, I am too involved to stand up and take a walk or something.
Technology relieves stress: During natural breaks through my workday it's easier for me now to go to TheOnion, Google News or Slashdot and just take a mental break. Instant messaging is yet another distraction that can be bothersome sometimes, but generally allows you to communicate with a bunch of people you know and feel like you're in the middle of a friendly conversation.
Before email was widespread outside the academia, most of the interaction with your customers would be by phone, which if you're a developer can be a PITA, cause when the phone rings you have to stop whatever you're doing to take care of that immediately.
Nowadays I found myself dealing w/ customers thorough mostly email and (sometimes) IM, and it is so much easier to ignore it while on a coding rage and say deal with it once every hour. Customers still get a quick feedback and I can organize myself better.
Nothing is wrong until some management idiot starts to stand behind you with a stopwatch...
This might be a caracture, but this happens more than you think...
No technique mostly is not stressfull, people are though.
Pretty interesting topic you have chosen, and one that not many people even think about. I know that I have not thought about this, or at least, not in this sense.
/. of course.
As any normal individual, I have a certain level of stress in my life. Both at work with a boss that refuses to recognize my contributions, and at home dealing with the teenager of the house who refuses to accept my authority.. for the most part, I would say that the technology in my house (3 servers, 1 desktop and 1 laptop, all mine!@#!@$) relieves some of this stress and tension. I love to sit down in front of my computer and play xpatience or pacman after an argument, and at work, I love to spend my day reading
So even though in these scenarios computers help relieve the stress, there are situations where the technology creates a lot more stress than we need, such is the case when things don't work as advertised.. or when that hardware keeps failing but you cannot duplicate it.. or maybe when no matter what you try, you can't get that program running/compiled..
So I would think that depending on the type of work that you do on your system, it is either a stress reliever or a stress source..
---
Never let your schooling interfere with your education.
If people get on your nerve, you can negotiate with them, yell at them, fire them, bribe them with donuts/lunch, etc. If a machine is not doing what you want, then you don't have these options. You may have to read an entire manual just to figure out how to make one tiny change. Thus, one seemingly thing turn into a major thing. The (almost) ideal interface is the Star Trek interface, and our machines don't have that. Of course people can be annoying also. Machines don't badmouth you behind your back and steal your girlfriend, for example. At least not yet.
Table-ized A.I.
Generally, I'm fine using technology.
It's when other people use it, and screw up, and I have to bail them out, that I get stressed.
(he says, jokingly, 12 hours after having to reinstall the OS because a drive decided to cough up a lung... what stress?)
There is probably a correlation between technology and stress. However, it is not so simple. A more thourough investigation would lead to the conclusion that BAD technology is corelated to stress. It just sof happens that a lot of the technology people encounter in the workplace is not very good ( custom inhouse vb/java applications that serve the buisness need, but have horrible interfaces. riddled with bugs).
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
First it was just coffee breaks. Then came tetris on computer + gossips. Now I have to keep up with a whole bunch of websites, emails, instant messages from buddies, play tetris and still have time for coffee breaks. See how technology has stressed me out at work.
Also, totally unrelated, I've done two internships in Germany, and without this dictionary I would not have been able to figure out half the things I did. The forums there were very helpful too. So that's how technology has helped me, and I accept it, I am not a luddite. :>)
I once had a gig in the dot com boom that was so stressful because of the lying, cheating, backstabbing, snubbing, and unprofessionalism in every direction that when I finally quit it, it took about six months before looking at the yellow default Outlook Web Access homepage would not cause a severe knot in my stomach. Doctor helped solve it with some special pills, and I went freelance again.
So yeah, put this in your paper -- pain can be delivered via SMTP.
Well, since I've been working in computers the whole time, computers themselves haven't made my life any less stressful. But some of the advances have helped.
For example, back in college, I supported a computer lab that didn't have a LAN or any hard drives. All of the original PCs had boot disks, and invariably, some student would take the boot disk, remove the little piece of tape off the write protect tab, and save their term paper to the boot disk. Then, they'd wonder why they couldn't find it a week later, on a different computer. Nowadays, those people are all in management at major software companies, mostly in the American southwest, but they can keep their files on shared drives, so they don't lose them, except when they click on attachments in Outlook.
The main technology that has made things less stressful has been quality search engines. It used to be really hard to figure out if a student had plagerized a paper - now, I know they all have. But seriously, now I can just type a few words in a search engine and figure out where they got their ideas.
A counter example: cell phones. Back when they were expensive, had short battery lives, and lousy coverage, I could actually go to a movie, a park, or a religious service without being called. Sure, its nice to be able to sit on hold with AAA if my car dies on the highway, but I could do with being a little less accessible the rest of the time.
Law is whatever is boldly asserted and plausibly maintained. -- Aaron Burr
New information technologies only add to stress. The more up-to-date information you have, the more you are requested to be up-to-date. The mails have a tendency to arrive at the same time, and you are considered rude, or worse, improductive, if you leave them a long time without answering. The more ways you have to comunicate, the bigger are your chances to be interrupted at the worst possible moment (think cell phone). The easier the communication is, the easier it's to consider that you can work everywhere, home, plane, traffic jam...
The demands on your time and attention only grow with technology, and so stress grows. It's a bit of an edge example, but I've been a stock investor for the last 20 years, and it was much more peaceful when I only could check the quotes once a day in the morning papers.
Rome taught me patience and assiduous application to detail. Virtues which temper the boldness of great, general views.
I think that technology and stress do not directly relate but that technology has created a faster pace. Technology creates 'higher and faster' expectations that not everyone can keep up with.
Falling behind creates stress.
Let me start by saying that Microsoft shook the world of Windows with the exposition of Windows 96 in 1996. Suddently the bar was raised in a world where GUIs did not have many expectations.
Many would have believed that the GUI had reached its ultimate. "My Computer," "My Documents," and "My Briefcase" were overnight sensations, with users of other operating systems migrating en masse to a warm and user friendly "operating system" as they called it at the time.
But Windows 96 was far from perfect. I didn't wonder why Microsoft called it a "work in progress" at Windowscon 96, although this admission made many developers in the crowd irate. Although the icons were accurate and the mouse pointers ornate, there was still something missing. That something was keeping Microsoft from getting 100% of the computer desktops of the world.
Flash forward to 2004. Users have been clamoring for a followup to the now-aged 96. Although officially leaked betas have been around for at least 2 years, "windows: wifebeater edition" has now hit the shelves.
SO WHAT'S NEW?
Well Steve, the first thing you'll notice is that My Documents, My Music, and My Briefcase have all been replaced. (You can still access them by unlockiing the Windows 96 hall of fame, but you have to drag the mouse 14,500 miles). Instead we have the unusual and new "My Cameltoe," "My Coupons," and "My Wifebeater." Although traditionalists may balk at this direction, Microsoft says it actually provides greater productivity and integration.
Now, when you want to beat your wife, you don't select it from the Office toolbar. It's built right into the windows explorer. Simply right click on "My Wifebeater" and select "Put on and beat!." And you can schedule it using Cameltoe manager, which can be found in Windows Control Panel.
All in all, Windows: Wifebeater edition is a welcome followup to Windows 96. Diehard Windows 96 users probably won't be upgrading anytime soon, but that makes sense since I've just defined them as people who won't be upgrading anytime soon.
I work from home. In the spring and summer I garden, every few hours I go outside and "de-tech", I take a good old garden hoe and shovel and go dig in the dirt. I notice I have a *LOT* more unrelieved stress in the winter when I don't get out and get the light and a good blast of sunshine. I close my eyes and look toward the sun to get my body clock back in sync. Then, after a few minutes outside (or just barefoot in the garden), I'm ready to go back to coding.
meh
Maybe less stress for people using tech if the tech is well designed (ie no linux or microsoft crap). Cool cellphones and pda may help them destress their lives by making it more organized. But for the people designing the technologies themselves, it is stressful. Think about it, technology changes so fast that you can't just graduate from college and expect to work till you are old with no retraining -- and you shouldn't expect this. But all this retraining and competition is of course adding stress.
So are people in technology more stressed out than the rent-a-cop down the hall? Sure, but we also make more money, so what's your point?
And yes, I am stressed out.
i believe technology can cause stress in the work place. afterall... it's my whole line of work... Dell Tech supprt...
The scene: A rotting shack out in the Montana mountains. A shaggy hermit-looking guy has typed a few lines of a document in Word 97.
Clippy pops up in the lower right corner of the screen and says. "I see you are the Unabomer. Can I help you with that?"
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
Well, yeah we sure as hell do get stressed! Not getting the first post is extremely frustrating! :(
I just figured it out -- you're recruiting for the home for the obsolete. You're hoping you'll catch a few geezers here who can actually remember a time before windows, .Net, and bloatware, so you can have us dragged off to the old programmers home. Not that I can remember any of those, of course.
Law is whatever is boldly asserted and plausibly maintained. -- Aaron Burr
I had someone pass me a copy of a magazine article once that described how much computer support (tech, web, etc) staff actually dislike taking vacation.
Why? because it's one of the few jobs where the work stacks up so much, that 5 minutes after you get back from vacation - regardless of how relaxing or fun it was - you're right back to the same (or greater) level of frustration and work stress that you had before you left....
After having been in the computer tech and internet world (support, as well as development), I can honestly say that I agree with this - especially for tech staff that are in smaller companies or offices where there isn't anyone to really cover your work while you're gone....
Worrying works!! 99% of all the stuff I worry about never happens
If it works, it's invisible. Nobody's stressed out by indoor plumbing or electric light.
Our lives are full of technology that doesn't work. Stress is when you're on deadline and the copier breaks down.
Computers, as currently implemented in the most widespread configurations, are a nightmare.
-- Tsiangkun
I would have to say more stressful. Deifinately. Just one technology by itself is not bad, but when you have to use a bunch of them together and have them interact it is easy for the stress to increase dramatically. However, I would say that more of my stress comes from the inability of my managers to understand the technologies that we use than from the technology itself. Troubleshooting a java application is one thing and having my manger scream "Just make it work!" at me because he does not understand that I cannot get 24bit color out of a legacy 8bit video card is something else.
I'm a unix sysdamin for a living. Most of the stresses in my life are directly related to technology, largely because I'm responsible for making the technology do what it was supposed to do when it doesn't.
When I get home, I fire up my PC with its whizzy net connection and surf or play Enemy Territory... or perhaps I see what Tivo watched for me, or pop in a DVD.
When I have time off, I like to travel-- car, airplane, boat, whatever.
It seems to me that technology may be the main cause of my stress, but it's just as large a reducer of stress in my life. What fun would a vacation be if I couldn't go somewhere else and see it? (and shoot pictures of it with my digital camera?) How insane would I be by now if I couldn't come home and blow off steam by blowing up your command post?
But then, what's technology, anyhow? Sure I enjoy a good book now and again, too. But even that took mass-production of paper and electric lighting to do... Does that count?
Try having children. I can punch my computer without going to jail.
what you are asked to install,fix, or implement.
There have been a few times were I have been shipped out to no where with limited resources/budget and asked to install some piece of equipment I have never seen before.
The problem as I see it is I'm good at installing tech and am a bit of a perfectionist. So when handed some new widget by those dough brained sales people or customers who look at you like your some kind of computer genius it causes STRESS.
Then you get lost at some point which drives up the stress which makes you screw up which drives up the stress etc, etc. In the end I have found you save far more time by stepping away for 15-30 minutes. Use that time to get ahold of the products support people HAHAHA. More Stress.
Si vis pacem, para bellum! For evil to succeed good men need only do nothing!
Technology has the potential to modify our expectations in almost every area of our lives. It changes our thoughts about safety. It changes our relationship to time. It changes how we expect others to communicate (whether we communicate that way or not - we are frequently hypocrites) What's more significant, is that it does not do this to us alone, it does it to everyone around us as well, so that our employer expects different things, our spouses, our schools, etc. Many times, the expectations that change are not reasonable at all.
Case in point:
I remember when I was growing up (12-16 years ago), my family lived in a very rural area. On Saturdays my mother would go into town for groceries and general shopping. She would be gone for about 3 hours. Occasionally, depending on how many places she went, how much she bought, if she went all the way into a town with a mall, she would be gone for 5 to 6 hours. She often forgot to tell my father she would be gone that long. On times like that, when she was gone for more than four hours, my father and I would step outside to look for her (this was irrational, as we could see about half a mile down the road, nevertheless we did it) and comment about how long she had been gone. We would look out the window more and more frequently as she was gone longer and longer. I know my father worried, but there wasn't much you could do short of getting in the truck and driving toward town. There were no cell phones (or if there were, we did not have one, and there were no cell towers around our house)
Flash-forward to today and you see a very different response to these "where are they?" situations. I've seen people dial someone's cell phone number over and over for hours trying to get hold of them. I've pretty much done the same thing myself, when I've been worried about my wife. When you do finally get hold of them, you are emotionally drained, relieved, and a little bit angry.
"Are you, OK!!!?" you demand of them.
"I had the cell phone turned off," they say, or, "It was in my purse and I didn't hear it ring." They even seem a bit puzzled by your concern. In your mind, they were stranded somewhere, or kidnapped, or worse.
My point (and I'm sorry for the long ramble) is that technology isn't exactly the culprit here, it's the way we let it change what we expect. The ability to reach out and touch someone no matter where they are makes us fear the worse when it ceases to be possible.
I think there are plenty of other similar relationships between technology and expectation, but I'll let someone else look at them, my lunch break is almost over.
--
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(COBOL, Fotran, PL/I, Assembler to COBOL, C, C++, C#, Java, etc.)
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Growing up with certain technology, I feel like a lot of technology simply makes my life easier with a lot less stress. There is an intrinsic understanding of this technology (programming VCRs, being able to operate a computer without many erros and whatnot - simple stuff) that allows many people of my age to use these things flawlessly. I think it's stressful for people who need to learn something new (my father trying to program the VCR for example or even myself when I'm working with a new programming language or something like that) and have a hard time adjusting to it.
I <3 my $0.02
Sounds like a great idea. Just make sure to mention the Microsoft Windows Operating System. Windows has caused me more stress than anything I have ever messed with before -- even girls.
I'm not trying to troll -- that's my honest opinion from the stressful point of view. It's not fun at all when you're typing up a long report... and even when you tell Word to save it after every 3 minutes, it doesn't, the OS crashes, and you lose your progress.
Aside from that, I'd probably have to say typos inside of scripts. I hate when I debug and have to go back to fix a lot of things before I can actually run my program. I know that's more of a "me thing," but it's pretty damn stressful.
Also, the unnatural things such as Viruses and Spyware cause a great amount of stress (and anger).
"Instant gratification takes too long." - Carrie Fisher
Getting rid of the commute is a real stress buster. That and refusing to own a cell phone. And hydroponic weed and my treadmill. So I'd have to say technology is a real stress buster. (Except for cell phones, of course)
I figured I'd log on to the new-fangled Internet and see if I couldn't wrangle up some help with a term paper. I should have this thing done shortly with as little delay as possible.
Do your own homework!
I work as a tech support monkey
so in my job I see a strong corellation between stress and technology.
Not my stress, of course, but stress nonetheless.
Its intention, motivated by capitalism, was and is to increase worker productivity and efficiency.
And no I'm not talking about the Ultramatic Bed. I'm talking about technology in the workplace.
You raise an interesting point. In my personal experience stress resulting from computer technology largely depends on the software I was running at the time. A {windowmanager,desktop,GUI} which reacts too slow can cause stress for me. I believe that less is sometimes more in this case. A small, lightweight window manager, properly configured, reacting fast is alleviate much of the stress. Interestingly enough the GUI of the graphics program GIMP sped up my work on images tremendously, once I got a window manager which supported tabs so that I could group utility windows together, thus taking up less screen space.
Now an argument for the "other side". The integrated work environments (KDE, Gnome) when providing coherent interfaces can also speed up work, alleviating stress.
All in all however, technology is only a small contributor to my stress levels.
I'm a programmer and think that technology brings with it a unique kind of stress. I've worked jobs like a cashier at burger king, picking tobacco, and a paper route and can say they cause what I would consider "normal stress", that consists of both physical and mental aspects. Programming in a stressful situation however leaves me trying to keep complete focus for very long periods of time with little of no physical exertion. This kind of stress leaves me in need of excercise like sports and beer to recover. With "normal stress" I need a nap afterward.
Technology is only stressful if you don't know how to manage your time, or if you don't know how to use it, or both.
For example, e-mail. A great and free method of instantaneous communication. If you constantly check your e-mail instead of getting work done, don't blame e-mail. Perhaps you should learn to use the automatic notification features? Or if it's too much e-mail, maybe you should learn how to use filters? Or to stop viruses, maybe you should not click on every attachment, or switch to another, better, e-mail reader?
Another, older, time-waster is TV. Maybe you're not getting enough sleep because you insist on watching Jay Leno or Craig Kilborne -- then wake-up late and rush out the door to work, thus causing more stress?
I was going to say more, but I'm wasting too much time already by posting. Good luck!
So does technology stress you out?
Of course CS and tech related majors are going to be more stressed out then your average theater major, business major or the like. We have hard classes. They have hard parties.
I see stress as a limiting factor in what can be accomplished in life. Regardless of the technologies available to a person, stress can be increased, and will be (as needed) until it effects the job.
It's all about capacity. Technology may have made our jobs easier (in comparison to the pre-technology period), but by freeing that capacity for other tasks, tasks are thusly assigned. Jobs now include more, and capacity is tested again to find the point at which stess creates the limit.
Yeah, that sounds good.
Sig
Appended to the end of comments you post. 120 chars
I love to tinker on the computer, except at work. I love to tinker on the car, except when I need to get somewhere.
Test 1 2 3 4
If technology gives you stress, it's because you've let it. Having a cell phone so I know I won't be stranded by the side of the road reduces stress. My iPod is the best stress reducer I've ever bought.
Technology for the most part increases the knowledge and information available to you. If more of that causes stress to you, I think you need to give some deep thought as to why.
This is not the greatest sig in the world, this is just a tribute.
Technology rarely causes me stress. People cause me stress.
Unless you are in a technology support roll, machines rarely grab your attention and make you do something. People, however, do that all the time.
In fact, I telecommute almost every day which dramatically reduces my stress level.
set softtabstop=4 shiftwidth=4 expandtab nocp worlddomination
By technology, I assume that the general target was computers? Well, first of all I think that in many computer situations physical stress is definately not that uncommon.
Given the assortment of odd chairs, desks, keyboard, mice, etc etc that one has to use... somewhere along the line most people don't exactly work in an ergonomic environment.
And of course, there's always mental stress. Computers allow you to - in many situations - do more (in less time). Often this can mean more work. Computers are also not always 100% reliable... and Murphy's Law basically says that it will demonstrate this at the worst of all times.
But remember, technology is in many ways tied to knowledge. You can do more, you can learn more. And remember, sometimes ignorance is bliss. Got a computer, got internet? Read SLASHDOT?? Well, now you may know a fair bit more about the world around you... but is what you know more worrysome or less? Evil corporations, evil politicians, your grandma who never reads news or enters discussion boards online doesn't have to worry about these things.
And of course the last things is that complexity in design leads to complexity in repair. If your old typewriter got a stuck key, you could perhaps unjam it with some pliers, a screwdriver, maybe some oil. Try unjamming your hard-drive after it seizes... not so easy.
Of course, technology also brings us PR0N, so I suppose that as a matter of "stress relief" there is some equivilence in things.
BOFH!
I do security
the margin for error goes away...
when people expected widgets to be produced in 3-4 days, spending an extra 10 minutes at lunch, or 1/2 hour fixing something wasn't a critical flaw.
when widgets can be produced in 2 hours, there's no time to make up for any unscheduled problems, be they human or mechanical.
I don't worry about my next meal, or being the next meal of a predator.
.44 inch holes in him without breaking a sweat, then call someone miles away to collect the body without even raising my voice.
I never want for clean water.
I have clothes that will protect me from nearly any weather conditions I am likely to encounter.
I have a mode of transportation that can easily take me from place to place at 100 miles per hour, in total comfort.
I expect to live to fully twice the age I would expect absent technology.
In spite of my "unnatural" long life I expect my shelter to last even longer . . . unless the land becomes more valuable than the building on it.
If anyone comes into that shelter to take what I have I can poke
I like technology. Makes life much less nasty, brutish, and short.
-Peter
PS: I anxiously await a counter-argument about car accidents, chemical food preservatives, and chemical warfare.
An extra point if you refrain from mentioning President Bush. Half a point if you mention him, but manage to refer to him by a proper name and/or title.
-P
Pity is also my main source of income.
I guess you can't have everything.
I mean Thag No Tail probably had stress issues with the local sabre-toothed tiger, and was worried aobut the meat supply, but he probably got on with it. My grand parents nearly lost their farm several times.
All of us born since the late 50's are a bunch of pussies about this. My pseudo-scientific opinion only.
Considering as I'd have a completely different occupation than I have now thanks to the evolution of technology in the workplace, I'd have to say 'no'. It's not given me more stress. In fact, I have less stress because I have a good paying job. Sometimes my eyes really hurt, though, when I've been staring at the screen too long, you know? Kinda like they're boring holes through my brain into the back of my skull...I guess that's a kind of stress.
"According to the Turtle" www.paperbackreader.com
Technology doesn't cause me any stress. Pretty much everything technological I work with just works, as designed. The problem is the users; the email system works fine, and the instructions to access it are step-by-step and easy to follow (for Mozilla - nothing else is supported). Problems occur when users want to use something else, and expect me to help them set it up. They also expect me to tell them how to get malware off their computer after ignoring my security warnings (update your system, don't use IE, pay attention to what you download/install/run). No, technology isn't the problem; it's the morons using it.
Considering what life was like before technology, I think I can welcome the stress. I don't have to worry as much about dieing from a broken leg. If my house isn't built before winter, I can just stay in my apartment with the heat on 80 instead of freezing solid in the first blizzard. I get email notifications on my cell phone telling me that my flight is cancelled. My bills are auto-paid for me.... and the list goes on. Technology, for better or worse, has put more structure in our lives. I drives our daily schedules telling you when to wake up, when to proceed through the intersection and that you're probably going to die in 5 months from the headache you have now. For me, technology only becomes stressful when its something that I've failed to keep up with.
Why? personal philosophy on life. I can't be offended by anything anyone says. I don't worry and be happy. I take it easy. If shit hits the fan I don't freak out, I deal with it. I use logic to deal with any obstacles I encounter in everyday life, usually avoiding them. It takes a whole lot to mess me up. You'd have to like shoot my mom or something.
Technology gives me the least stress. In fact it takes me into the realm of negative stress. I'm so good with my computer and other technologies that in order for them to cause me any trouble all my hard drives would have to crash and burn in an unrecoverable fury.
Here's an example. We have a cheapo crap Apex DVD player and a DVD-ROM. We wanted to watch a DVD. The Apex was old and crappy and we couldn't find the remote. The DVD ROM has a problem where it wont allow you to watch past a certain spot of the movie. We think the laser is stuck and wont move to the edge of the disc. Not only that, but we couldn't find a free dvd playing software for windows. Instead of stressing and freaking out we had a lot of fun. We searched the net for dvd playing software in italian. We opened up the case on the apex and put a fan near it to prevent overheating. It was a total fiasco and a ton of fun.
Normal people would have stressed out. By dealing with problems in life by applying basic problem solving skills, stress goes away. I believe that the majority of stress in the world is due to people who don't have or use basic problem solving skills. These people come to a problem and are stopped dead in their tracks until either it explodes or someone saves them from their misery.
If you are stressed out, its your fault, not the fault of any technology. Adopt the philosophy of me, my roomate and others and you will live a happy life of perfect.
The GeekNights podcast is going strong. Listen!
My BOSS does!
...
You insensitive clod!
NO SIG
Technology itself does not cause the stress, unless you are talking about specifics, such as "I've been working on this 3D character for the last 8 hours, and no matter what I do, his arm keeps flipping, @#$()#)($*!..." Thats stressful, but thats due to the task, not the technology.
However, I do not like cellphones because I think being too easily accessible is stressful. There is something very satisfying about leaving my apartment and being by myself for a while, without worrying about answering a phone and talking to people I may or may not want to talk to. If I want to talk to my friends or whatnot, I wait till I get home, or if I really need to take out a phone card and call from a public phone. I do not own a cellphone (never have), and I do not miss it (though there are always those moments where it would have been useful). I do not look forward to being forced to get one for work...
"What can a thoughtful man hope for mankind on Earth, given the experience of the past million years? Nothing." -Bokonon
After 35 years in the technology business, I think I can say with some authority that it's not the technology that causes the stress.
It's management.
Sorry but try as you might, /. is never gonna institute the "-1 Karma Whore" mod, so get over it.
Not more than you need, just more than you want
Technology certainly increases stress in most workers.
Any time I'm considering making any changes to a network - the first concern is getting the employees who use the changing resources to learn and understand the changes.
And my God, you would think you asked them to cut off their right arm when you ask them to spend thirty minutes learning and understanding something new.
I've actually had people flip out and quit, on the spot, when they learned of a system change.
IT people, as well, are going to be stressed by their work. But _everyone_ is a little stressed with things at their work. So asking someone who works primarily in technology if technology has increased the stress in their life is a moot point. Of course it does, it _is_ their job.
That's like asking a cop if crime has increased stress on their life.
...People do. I love the technoloigy I work with (sysadmin), and while it is frusrating at times, it is a good kind of frustration (generally). Solving problems that arise often is a good feeling.
I have a cell phone, that I do not answer if it is work because they are not supposed to have it... They give me a pager for that. Which often doesn['t work becuase they go with the cheapest they can find in terms of price and quality.
People I deal with at work and in life, however, cause most of the stress in my life. If you work for an idiot, whether in technology or not, it is VERY stressful.
Going into a job if they tell you that they are giving you a cell phone and pager and you are on call, THAT creates the stress, not the technology.
Saying that technology causes stress is like saying that mp3 (the format) causes music piracy.
In the old days, you could, you know, master like fifteen books of strategy and four hundred historical battles and two or three weapons and that was it -- from there on out it was just you.
... so technology has created all this change that makes it so much more difficult to find a fulfilling path to skill and knowledge.
And now war is so much more complicated and the Pentagon is saying stuff like there's a Moore's law for war and with a new technology every minute we can be X much more efficacious offensively
Although I suppose that was always the case. Change is change. Imagine how stressed out some craftsman must have been in the middle of the industrial revolution -- not only has his productivity been dwarfed, but his skills have been invalidated. It's like a kick in the face to the culture that's been passed down to this poor hypothetical guy from like, fifty generations ago.
Whereas at least in today's workplace many core skills remain the same, as we increase our productivity (though some skills are becoming invalidated). And we're not as grounded in our work, not as culturally attached to it as this pre-industrial craftsman, so it's harder to shock us.
First few weeks at a new job: So energized, able to work 24/7, and glad to do it.
Past the initial enthusiasm: High stress due to harsh deadlines.
After realizing that deadlines arent really important anyway: Stress evaporates due to mounting cynicism.
After job loss: Zero stress while on Unemployment insurance.
End of unemployment insurance looms: High stress of finding a new job.
First few weeks of new job... Repeat cycle.
Duh.
No matter what we build for ourselves to make things "easier", it is human nature to push ourselves and also the job of management to push. Even though we invent "X" to reduce 20% of the time spent doing "Y" task in the workspace, that extra 20% will be filled up with a new task.
Now, if management didn't KNOW about invention "X" and we were away from them so they never knew our effeciency, then we could relax, because we're optimizing that one particular job. But when things become "dynamic", we'll always be pushed to the limit.
This whole "to make our lives easier" is just marketing spin in order to appeal to the masses. You have your basket of primal urges that marketers can pull from, laziness is one.
You wouldn't get away with "eWhammo! brings together 10 exciting technologies into such an easy product that you double your productivity. It's never been eaiser to cut costs (lay-offs) and boost productivity 20% (overtime, because remaining employees are scared shittless)."
It all depends on your line of work. A lot of computer and communications technology has speeded work up and might be construed as creating more stress. Think of asynchronous communications - snail mail with expected turn around times measured in days, then came fax, you felt you should get something turned around in a day, then email, it should be instantaneous.
We have always have the phone for synchronous communication, but once you could get away from it, now you take it with you. It makes you always available, or creates a perception that you should be, but while it means that you can be controlled/coordinated anywhere anytimem, it also means that you can control/coordinate from anywhere at any time. Whether this is a good or bad thing depends on your place in the pecking order.
Technology has certainly made me more productive over the years and taken some stress out of some things. I can now be less precise because spell check (if only Slashdot had one) will catch most things, I can revise written work more easily and I don't have to have things finished until just before the deadline, particularly for something like a book where there is going to be a hard copy printed and bound. Once upon a time, proods were assembled physically and sent back and forth by courier. Now things can be done almost entirely electronically and I can keep making changes right up until the time it goes to press. Very annoying for the printers and designers, but very helpful for me.
I suspect that in general the question as to whether or not technology in general or a specific technology is more or less stressful to you depends on whether it empowers you and lets you exercise more control over your work and your environment or whether its implementation has the effect of reducing your ability to control what you do. I have never worked with keystroke loggers and call time recorders, if I had, I would probably blame technology for making my life more stressful.
I've finally got around to changing my sig
For 2 and a half years, I thought the money was worth it, but never again.
Mom says my
It isn't technology, it is people. I've had stress while working at McDonald's flipping burgers. Late at night, down to 3 people and a bus comes, and suddenly I'm trying to do as much work as normally takes 5. Latter on in life my Boss can barely keep the other managers from pounding on my cube "door" asking when I'll be done with some critical thing, but I felt no stress.
The difference is me, not technology. I've learned that I don't have to feel stress, and I work better when I don't let it bother me.
Your hypothesis needs to be proven, and I believe it is false. There is a paper in there, if you do your research right. So long as you assume the hypothesis you will write just another academic paper that isn't worth the roll you print it on. (and I hope you have the sense to print it on the roll)
Like any tool, technology can be used for good and bad. The ability to access real-time databases and communicate effectively has made me more productive.....but at the same time, management has introduced technology to reduce costs and increase productivity that has effectively increased my individual stress. I can do a task faster now then a clerk used to be able to do it but even if it only takes 10 minutes to perform some task that used to be done by someone else - multiply that by 20 things that I now do rather then that other person.
In addition, poorly implemented technology increases stress. For example, an online peer review process was rolled out and due to the surge in access, the system slowed to a crawl. The deadlines did not change however so frustration and stress increase. Obtuse help systems and the inability to talk to a real person for system difficulties are other examples.
Like anything else in life, when it works well, life is good - when it doesn't, it stinks!
My gadgets treat me just fine... it's everybody else's bugridden crap that gives me headaches!
In every part of life there is stress and in the work place there will be some form of stress. I think technology lowers the stress though. For instance if i get stressed out i can put a funny movie on, listen to music, or play a game. Couldn't do that when 20 years ago unless u brought a radio/TV/ and board games in. Now it's located all in one place. Orginzation is also easier. Finding stuff is easy. (no searching through stacks of paper memos, but instead just hit find in email and a sec later you have it)
If I don't answer my phone it goes to voicemail or user punches "0" to get back to reception and someone is generally dispatched to go hunting around for me because it's a "computer emergency" - getting across the concept of "I'm a programmer, extension XYZ is for tech support" is moot when you're considered a "computer guy" and when people gripe that "well, either that extension is busy or he's gone (supporting someone else)" - what is the deal with instant gratification?
Yay technology.
Yay stress.
Has the evolution of technology in the workplace (computer, internet, email, etc...), which is suppose to make your job easier, made it any less stressful? If so, how? If not, why?
/. recently about Tech Support.
My work is to fix the problems that arose due to the evolution of technology in workplace. So, my stress is directly a result of it. You probably would have to refocus the question. Say, something like, How do people respond to technological changes at workplace? and then take specific examples and go all the way...
Assuming you have refocussed, here's my story: technological changes themselves aren't the stressful part. Dealing with people around you who are trying to agjust to the technological changes is the stressful part. Ask any call center guy. You may also recall this discussion on
Science as a way of life.
you aren't too busy to post on slashdot...
There's no question that contact with living things is a stress reducer. Plants, animals, and even other human beings. Machines can't really do that for me.
Granted I only mean physical contact. Having to deal with the needs of said living things is another story.
"Reactionaries must be deprived of the right to voice their opinions; only the people have that right." - Mao
I work in technical services in an academic library. In library parlance, "tech services" refers less to library automation per se than it does to acquisitions, cataloging, processing and all those other "behind-the-scenes" things that happen that get the books on the shelf where they ought to be. For libraries, the advent of the computerized catalog was a HUGE breakthrough, for a number of reasons. For starters, thanks to the Library of Congress and consortia like OCLC and RLIN, any library can (for a small fee) download existing cataloging records, insert library-specific data (such as barcodes, for instance) and have a full record for that title much faster than the days they had to catalog everything by hand.
Library automation has also made online catalogs themselves much more accurate and much more precise. If I'm looking for a book about CowboyNeal, back in the days of the card catalog, it would be hard to track down unless I knew a title, and I'd probably have to ask a librarian for the approximate call number. Modern online catalogs are essentially search engines that use search engine logic. Some even have the capability of searching specific fields within records (subject= cowboyneal & author= cdrtaco)
On the surface, this is a very good thing, and has made libraries a LOT more efficient. One library I used to work at had a card catalog backlog of several weeks. Once they automated, the turnaround on new materials is generally not more than 24 hours.
The downside to all this is that this power has made online catalogs quite unintuitive. Average Joe Library User is just as confused about the proper use of the online catalog as back when he was confused about the proper use of card catalogs. The other downside is that I'm finding that there's a definite tendency to fight the library system rather than work with it: the assumption is that the computer is in error and therefore requires lots of checking. The very concept of assuming that the system is correct is rather foreign.
In some libraries, at least, the stress comes not because of automation, but rather from not knowing how to implement it correctly.
----------
Something cleverthe only thing I am stressed out about these days are lawsuits.....
:\
I keep waiting to be sued by the RIAA, MPAA or SCO
Well, in general, I do more sysadmin than programming, but when I'm dealing with programming, the only stress I feel is when people want to drag me away from programming. I love to make the electrons dance!
But, in the sysadmin side, I've had a stressful week when I did a routine thing that should've made the main system I admin much better and cooler, but ended up destroying critical data, and the helpdesk people who could help did not consider my cries for help and the rising chants for my head to be implaled on a pike and placed in front of AR as a warning did not constitute justification for their assistance. So, I was powerless to effect change but held responsible for said change. Therefore, insufficiently understood technology is indistinguishable from stress. Or something.
There are other technologies I use. My family has TVs and VCRs and have been known to record shows in order to watch them later. (No DVR yet.) We also have DVD players. My wife does not understand the controllers and is thus stressed by them. I set everything up and thus understand them fully and have no stress.
There are also phones. We have a land line and two cell phones. I only get stressed out by that technology when 1) I'm in a place where it doesn't work, like the two drop-off points on the way home; 2) the device is resistant to understanding and modification, like the inability to upload or download ringtones (although I can program them via the keyboard); 3) The technology is used to invade my life. Telemarketers, popups, spam, are all intrusive, stress-creating technologies by design.
Most other technology-related stress points are more cultural than technology. Is the stress over carrying the midnight reboot beeper stress over beeper technology, or is it because we have a culture that values responsiveness and runs ever-more 24-7? At best (worst?), technology enables workaholics with that sort of total communication, ever on-call capabilities the same way it enables slackers with gaming systems and on-demand pizza delivery.
Now in addition to doing my own work, I have to write some guy's term paper.
I realize this is a joke but even before reading any of the comments here I was thinking the same thing. Technology making life more stressful? Please. Kiddo, in my day we actually had to work when we wrote term papers. Nowdays, thanks to technology (and the fact that you don't seem to understand the meaning of the phrase "independent work"), you can get your term paper largely written for you by posting a question on slashdot and cut-and-pasting the highly-modded comments into your paper. You claim that you're a techie. Why don't you use your own experiences to construct your arguement instead of cobbling together the collective wisdom of the slashdot community?
I'm not a coal miner if that's what you mean.
You can have my cynical agnosticism when you pry it from my cold, dead logic.
Often I'll look up from one of my screens and realize that my entire body is tense and I haven't taken a full breath in what must be a couple of hours. Between sitting at a computer all day, listening to the radio in my car, and turning the t.v. on at home, I can often spend an entire day under technology's spell. Every now and then I'll come up out of the technotrance and just sit or putter around for a couple of hours with all of the post-lightbulb inventions switched off and feel myself returning to the real world.
It seems I must unplug myself for at least a few hours a day to recharge.
Yes, if you are obsessed with technology. I've been in front of my computer screen for more than 10 hrs per day, which hurts my eyes. No, if you know when to rest. One recommendation to fight stressed is to meditate, which gives you a calm and fresh mind. Highly recommend this http://www.dhamma.org/.
http://www.isolvesystems.com - Technology Marketplace
In my Journal
Maybe I'll finally get some comments...
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
People give me stress. Technology makes it easier for me to deal with people.
While people can flame me in email, its nothing compared to the feeling of getting yelled at in person. Someone gives me stress on the phone, I hang up. If I have a problem to solve, i can find lots of people to talk to on AIM or I can browse the internet to get more information - reducing my stress. Watching the right television show, movie on DVD, listening to music on MP3, or lookng at pictures of my family on JPG reduces my stress.
People give me stress. Technology reduces my stress.
I strongly believe that stress and any activity that requires concentration are linked. I also believe it depends on the person. For example, I never really feel stress in working on any of our high availability server until I have someone breathing down my neck, asking me every 5 seconds if I've figured out what the problem was.
It's not that easy.
But, there's also people I know who are in fairly easy situations (no personal accountability for availability of things, but have accountability for ability to do things with the availability -- IE, no direct responsibility over data, but have to use data in certain things), who get stressed a bit over the inability of others to do things.
These tools were NOT supposed to make your job easier, they were supposed to make you more productive and they certainly have (even if spam, non-work-related surfing etc counts in the other direction). I don't think this necessarily implies having a more stressful work environment.
As far as IT is concerned, it is *not* stressful.
Nobody dies when you foul something up. It doesn't affect a whole lot, maybe some company's profit margin, or delivery of some merchandise.
Try being an airplane mechaninc, where you are held criminally liable for every corpse related to something that breaks if you've signed off on it.
Maybe a fire fighter, where when you don't do your job correctly people die.
Policeman, when you fail to do your job, you die, innocent people die...
Compared to these, IT is a cakewalk.
And yeah, I know that IT has a strong influence in many of these fields, but it is abstracted from the first-hand death inherent in each.
I don't have technology in my workplace you insensitive clod! - Brian
Technologies that stress me out at work (rated in order of aggravation, 1 being the worst).
1. Telephones: The god awfull ringing all day long is distracting. Speaker phone conversations are incredibly irritating. The constant interruptions to the work you do are infuriating. And the coworker in the cubicle next to you shushing you because your talking about a REAL problem with your other coworker is louder than his Goddamn conference call ON SPEAKERPHONE.
2. Email: People who expect an immediate reponse from you for every stupid little infuriating Email they send. If you want a response, turn on return receipts, I have work to do and can't be checking my email every 30 seconds just for YOU. I have a company with a couple thousand people in it, you're not that special. I also hate Email filters (OUTLOOK) that still popup the new mail notification icons/noises/dialogs/whatever when you get an email, EVEN IF YOU SET IT TO BE DELETED OR MARKED AS ALREADY READ!@!@#%!#%!#
3. Windows 5 minute boot: Every Goddamn morning I get to work, something is wrong and needs to be fixed NOW NOW NOW, but I have to wait 5 minutes before my stupid laptop finishes booting (and that includes the three minutes I sit at the desktop waiting for all the background services to load). I have a P3 and a gig of RAM on the damn thing, and it's a standard W2K image that the WHOLE COMPANY uses!
4. Pop/Candy machines: It's 6pm. I'm thirsty/starving. There's one Gatorade left. I put in my dollar. The Goddamn Gatorade gets stuck. COME ON!! It's 2004! Can't we make a freakin' pop machine that works already?!?!
5. Computer Software: Nothing every works right and I spend a good half hour each day recovering from crashed programs, or whacked out states of all the software I used. None of it ever works right. I've even had Notepad crash my computer (I'm sure it was a symptom of another problem, but it's still shocking when it happens).
Stuff that doesn't bother me right now (because we don't use it at my current job), but would be in this top 5 list if we did:
1. Instant Messaging: It's the living hell of Telephone and Email combined into a single system. Worst of all, if you don't configure it properly, it tells everybody EXACTLY when you are at your desk.
Bryan
Technology doesn't cause me stess. Dealing with people that are clueless about technology and are unwilling to learn (even though it's rapidly becoming a part of their job) is what causes me stress.
There's no shame in being a pariah. -Marge Simpson
Technology increases productivity, which means you can do more. So, instead of having an accounting department, you have one guy responsible for payroll, accounts receivable, preparing for audits....
Technology makes work more stressful because you have to do a job that ten years ago might have been ten jobs.
Funny doesn't get you karma
I don't try to be right, I just try to make people think
Truth be told, I find the human part of technology to be more stressful than the technology itself. The gadgets I have around me are tools. The people I have around me are demands. "Get this done by the next trade show! Long term impact of this be damned!"
Maybe I'm oversimplifing a bit. I just find the tappity tap at my keyboard parts of the day to be the most serene for me. Boy do I hate when the phone rings...
"Derp de derp."
The first thing that causes stress in the workplace is unreasonable demands. In the "good old days", people did work. The amount of work that could be done was directly correlated to the number of people weilding shovels, rubber stamps, or whatever. Today, the servers do the work; particularly in IT, we are in more of a maintenance role. Something goes down, productivity is affected, fix it quick! But there is no direct correlation between amout of equipment and number of people required to maintain it- random failures are not properly and evenly scheduled. So it is easy to shave a few more people off the payrole and dump the job on the rest. Then, the pressure is there to work the extra 8 hours the day it is needed. Those days become more frequent. Overtime? We can't afford it.... Part of the issue is the perpetual cash crisis most businesses appear to be running with. our wholesociety both causes and suffers from this; big box stores squeeze small retailers and old-style department stores. On-line sales steal from higher-cost bricks and mortar. Everyone is conscious that they cannot charge an extra 5% because the consumer can compare so easily against the huge number of choices. Of course, and CEO's are comparing this quarter's bottom line against last quarter's, and this i where their share price/performance bonus/ stock options jump into action, so they are pressuring the organizations to perform. The result, is that every organization is running as lean as it can. Sometimes this is good- compare the modern fuel-injected car to its carburetor ancestor. The computer squirts in just the right amount of fuel, and just the right spark advance, based on the acceleration, air temperature, etc. No unburnt gas out the exhaust, and better gas mileage and performance to boot! But, if these things don't work exactly right, the results could be far more disasterous. So, the modern employee like the modern devices, is running close to the edge of maximum performance. Knowing how to run those cell phones, pages, remote operation focomputers, fixing problems from home - you're never away from your work. Now add the demands - it's possible, so work now expects you to always be available. Hence the anxiety when things don't work asplanned - power outages, being outside cellular coverage, a trivial failure that makes your connectivity impossible... Then there's the time stress - gotta fix it now! The volume stress; how many problems at once? The challenge stress - if you're "mister fixit", you always get something different. Frustration - a problem that someone could have easily prevented, is yours to fix. Sometime challenge is good - too much is overwhelming. dd to that the frustration of impotence ( no, not erectile disfunction). Thepopularity of comic strips like Dilbert points to how people in technical situations feel that their effort is not appreciated, the administrative types (who always seem to be on top and successful) don't know the job, you're surrounded by idiots, can't fire Fred 'cuz "we don't fire people here", "fix it or you're fired",people are headcount and all those mixed and contradictory signals that are the product of large bureaucracy... Add to the stress, that you can't escape this stuff at home. Cellphones, callerID, etc. mean that now the same stress problems start to appear in your home life.
For instance, I'm losing sleep these days trying to figure out why my 62.5/125 multimode SC/SC patch cables are not working with my new gigabit network cards and switches when they worked just fine with my older 100Base-FX setup. Last night I foudn ONE cable that that network card thought worked but the switch didn't (got a connection but no traffic). Many more nights like that and I may just go back to token ring.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
Keeping my email client, and an instant messenger open at all times has had the effect of preventing me from relaxing and focusing on a single continuous task. (the frequent interruptions or reminder popups keeps me a bit on edge)
It's not exactly technology that causes stress in my world. It is when technology goes wrong. Such as when MS Word keep trying to 'correct' my formating because it thinks I want it a certain way. Or a computer is acting up for no apparent reason and we can't find the answere.
Of course, for me technology is also a solution to stress.
FPS+GOD MODE+32 BOTS+100 FRAG LIMIT+WEAPON OF CHOICE=NO STRESS
Whoever says video games cause violence have never learned the stress relieving properties of fragging many, many bots.
Fly me to the moon Let me sing among those stars Let me see what spring is like On jupiter and mars
Having to customize everything with a command line text editor on my Linux computers is a pain in the ass.
alternatively, this stuff has been used for stress relief, etc..., since way back when...
Years ago I worked for the public library. I loaded carts and shelved books for $13Cdn an hour. Then I took HTML up as a hobby and yearned for a tech job. I found one and said "Seeya!" No more cart pushing for moi.
:-). I hope to return to the library some day before I die at my desk.
Now I wish I was back pushing carts and yup, I would take the lower pay.
Sometimes I send emails and then worry if I had sent it to the right people or wrote the right thing.
A lot of my co-workers are suprisingly clueless or dumb or fail to learn. Many can't touch type.
Some days the phone is ringing while a million people are messaging me. It's taken me a long time to learn to ignore all these interruptions.
Everything was always needed yesterday. It's taken me five years to realize that unless something is on fire or someone is dying, it's not that important.
Panic sets in when a typo sneaks into something that's going live and another deploy needs to be done.
At the end of the day, I don't leave my work behind. It's constantly on my mind.
Having too much available time stresses me out as it will make me a candidate for a lay off.
I have the body of an 80 year old due to the fact that I feel chained to my desk. If I'm not there I'm not being "productive".
I'm not as happy as I used to be, but can't afford to leave (trust me, I've done the numbers, my SO (a former techie) makes $7 an hour warehousing and we've cut as much as we could, we need my job. Our only debts are the car and the house and no one is hiring).
I come home angry at everyone and it's not healthy for me or my SO.
All the things that made me unhappy at the library, they pale in comparison to the things that make me unhappy at my tech job. Maturity and wisdom does that to a person
You're kidding, right?
Wishing I was a millionaire since 1969.
Because, in a serendipitous coincidence, on slashdot's front page, you'll find and article titled Timeshifting: Cram More into Life.
If you read the description on the front page, you'll find a person who's seeking to use technology to its fullest to push out all the "dead space" in his life.
Eventually, there's nothing that technology can't provide. That is, the only thing technology can't provide is nothing.
I'd argue that, on occasion, people need a little nothing -- quiet, distractionless, reflecting time that you could call 'down' time -- and we're getting less and less of it.
In fact, we are so used to getting no down time that we don't even know what we're missing. All this distraction is like a diet of fast food: tastes good at the time, but nutritionally deficient, if not outright destructive.
But maybe I'm just old fashioned.
"It's an erotic, spectacular scene that captures the thrusting, violent, vibrant world Bohemian spirit..."
Assuming you were driving and your cell phone came on and you were suddenly drawn into a conference call, your lack of attention to driving (and possible slowing down to avoid an accident as attention is divided) your apparent change of attitude in driving is observed by other drivers. The change lanes to get around you, or sit there and put up with it (possibly stewing over the situation) other drivers shift to accomodate, and so on. Perhaps time at work, to keep your job, places stress upon the family and how they interact with others. And so on.
It does seem that KISS has been thrown out the window, to make life easier for someone, somewhere, but a lot of people are being put upon to make that happen. Maybe someone is suffering because they've slaved away under stress to give you the tools and devices you depend upon. Is more actually getting done, or is technology simply a circular treadmill with several people on it at once?
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Last weekend actually was the weekend I took off from the internet. No email, news, /. (sorry)...just a little music programming schtuff. And it was damn relaxing!
Why the break? Because my job has been driving me nuts lately, driving me to the point of (gasp!) hating programming. So before I was going to let that happen, I kept the router off. A nice holiday, I recommend it to everyone.
trying to find the minimize button before the boss pops in to my cube
Technology itself does not cause me any undue stress. It's the general populace's ignorance of technology that causes me undue stress.
The people that refuse to learn ANYTHING about the system that runs their lives and makes their work possible. The people whose office I have to traverse 3 floors to get to who can't figure out HOW TO PRINT A DOCUMENT FOR THE 347th TIME. THE PEOPLE WITH 2 4-YEAR DEGREES WITH TWICE MY F**KING SALARY WHO TRY TO GET MY JOB OUT-SOURCED BECAUSE I'M "NOT NEEDED"!
The same damn people who call me at 11:00 PM while I'm getting drunk and banging my wife. On the Nextel phone provided to them with the "walkie-talkie" because they want me to walk them through sending an e-mail and programming their VCR.
The same damn people who can't even program a couple phone numbers in their cell phone and call me to their office to help them.
The same damn people who won't even let me hire a Jr. Network Admin to be my bitch to handle this piddly crap while I'm trying to keep things running and write software.
The same people who blame me for lost data because they were too stupid to save it. "You need to find someone who can keep these computers from always being down, I lost 200 pages!"
The same people who go above me and say "the internet is down" when they can't get to the MSN Start page or can't talk to 14fem-JailBait6347 with Yahoo/MSN/AOL Instant Messenger.
The same people who complain to the President that the computers are crappy because I got rid of all the PC's and forced them to use RDP terminals w/ terminal services with restrictive group policy because of all the above problems. "We need Windows XP 2004, I've got it at home and it's way better and shiny! I can't even right-click anymore!"
(I would have used X Terminals but we have a certain proprietary DB that is Winblows based, everything BUT system is BSD UNIX).
In my personal life, technology is blissful.
Professionally, I don't think most people should be allowed NEAR a computer (or anything electronic) without proper training, we'll call it a "computing license". Not saying they need to be computer scientists or pay for courses. Just pass prerequisite tests prior to employment.
Most people complain and say "computers are unreliable, we should go back to typewriters and pencils, that was easier!" Due to their phobia and refusal to grow a clue, it IS more efficient and easier for them to use pencils and typewriters. So I say....LET THEM.
Technology is not stressful. Technology in the wrong people's hands is nothing but stress. I've actually considered buying an SKS or an AK-47 and having LART hand-engraved on the stock.
For me, technology makes life fun and worth living. There's always something new around the corner and always something to play with and keep me busy be it coding, playing games, breaking out the soldering iron, watching TV, etc.
--Kevin
As I watched that movie, I realized that there are probably other cultures, the Japanese being one of them, that do a *much* better job of utilizing technology than Americans do. Even though they have a population density that is something like 5x ours, they seem to do a decent job (better than we would) of dealing with stress and finding "alone time" for themselves. I think that technology, when properly integrated into our lives, can help us deal with the hectic schedules and stresses of dealing with other people instead of adding to it.
Americans tend to use new technologies as a plaything rather than as a real tool. Segways, computers, and all those handheld things make great examples. Consider that paper usage went *up* as computers and printers began to be adopted in US businesses and you'll see what I'm talking about. Most businesses I deal with are more interested in tracking their employees goof-off time on the internet than increasing their productivity with new ways of doing things. It's the American way: If we can't understand it, we use it for Solitaire.
Some things I'm thinking about that "Lost in Translation" specifically reminded me of:
cars: these cause more stress than they solve, and health problems to boot.
swimming pools: these help people deal with stress. The problem is, those who can afford them *don't* need them by definition. In the US, you don't own a pool unless you're retired. Even then, you can only use it for goofing-off since it's outdoors.
home automation: In the US, home automation is to impress your friends. I'm sure elsewhere, it's to help you live your life more comfortably.
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
I think your task is simpler if you define your terms first. Psychologists often define stress as being the result of conflict...normally internal ones. Conflicting desires, or desires at odds with your environment, or an environment hostile to your physical needs can all cause stress.
If you examine the way technology has altered our environment, both physically and psychologically, I think you will find plenty of correlation between it and stress. It doesn't take a brain surgeon to notice how maladapted we are for our twenty-first centruy lifestyle. We are overpopulating, overeating, and generally abusing ourselves and one another to an extent unheard of in societies further back along the technology curve. (I have rarely seen obese people anywhere but America. Think of tha amount of pain and suffering caused by simply being overweight...) We are bombarding eachother with advertising specifically designed to make us unhappy with our lot in life, killing eachother at wartime casualty rates on the highways, and poisoning our air, water and food supply with an ever-increasing output of waste. We cram ourselves into little boxes all day long, devoid of fresh air, sunlight and constantly exposed to electromagnetic radiation, sitting unblinking in front of CRT's and LCD's while stuffing industrially produced food into our faces, then go home and do the same thing.
I'll tell you what: when I was 18, I was a bit of a vagrant. I lived on the street for several weeks. I was certainly not a pillar of the community.
But I never felt freer or more stress free than I did then. All I had to worry about was where I would eat and sleep next. Simple. I didn't have things to clean, things to fix, things to do, people to pay, people to boss me around, people to be prettier than, places to go...I simply had to survive. There is a clarity of life that rapidly gets blurred by twenty-first century living. I will probably end up moving to a log cabin in the mountains to recapture that feeling.
Technology can make you comfortable...too comfortable, in fact...but it will never make life simple, and I think it is an excellent source of stress. The only thing better at producing stress than technology is other people...and there wouldn't be so damn many of them if it weren't for technology.
Can I write your paper?
Has the evolution of technology in the workplace (computer, internet, email, etc...), which is suppose to make your job easier, made it any less stressful?
My job consist of writing web applications. I can't say technology has made the job any less stressful, since that same technology is what makes it possible at all.
My job-related stress mostly comes from management and coworkers, with poor documentation running a close second, followed by what an incredible pain in the ass it is to get a printer working under Linux.
Proud member of the Weirdo-American community.
Technology certainly doesn't cause stress in itself. I think stress comes from several different areas. In terms of software, I think the issues are generally buggy software, failure of people to communicate properly, and probably misguided or unrealistic expectations. I think these three things are my biggest sources of stress, in no particular order.
Buggy software isn't usually a huge stress problem for me, but it is for a lot of people. Failure to commmunicate for a software developer can be a huge source of stress, though. For example, I have a client right now who, after we finalized the requirements, made several major changes (and countless small ones) to the system after it was developed. I tried to communicate the impact that would have on the timeline. He seemed to understand that, but then he started talking about how it was supposed to be done months ago (based on the original requirements) and now can't seem to understand the impact his changes had, even though I told him from day 1.
This same client is causing issues with unrealistic expectations. The software was about 8 months in development and we're nearing the end. It's been in testing for 2 days and he's frustrated because they're finding bugs. I made it clear to him before we started testing that I expected us to find bugs and that's why we are testing. Now he's talking about throwing out the entire project and starting over from scratch with a different developer (which frankly, at this point, would be fine with me).
So, from my point of view, as a software developer, these are the things that cause me stress.
But technology that doesn't work like it should is stressful. Technology that is poorly designed and implemented is stressful. People who don't know how to use technology is stressful. People who shouldn't be using technology is stressful. Guns don't kill people...
I believe you have this bass-ackward. I think we work harder until we reach the point at which one or more symptoms of what we call stress tells us to back off, slow down. Technology just moves that point upwards in terms of how much we can get done before we reach that point. Technology is linked to productivity, but I don't see how it connects to stress...excpet when describing the effort it takes to make the technology do useful work. Then technology has become the work we have to do. So your thesis may have limited usefulness....
Can anyone point to a study or two that backs up the common assertion that using computers for long periods of time damages eyesight?
I know that you can get fatigued eyes, especially with flickery monitors, etc, but I'm am talking about actual damage to long-term eyesight.
It seems like if there was hard evidence of this, then we would be seeing *thousands* of workers' compensation and other legal claims.
I said it. Computers are BORING. Sitting in front of a monitor all day is a chore in itself. Is this stress?
love is just extroverted narcissism
I read in a previous post a statement that was summarized to: "machines do not cause stress, people cause stress", and another lovely one by jem i think: "correlation does not imply causation".
I read A LOT of posts, but only reply to some. And i think those two quotes hit on what i think. I work for a semi-conductor company and run my own software company when i get home. Essentially i have no one else to be responsible for, other than employees and peers at work. Just based on this, i would strip your comparison to those that ARE married and ARE NOT, and of course HAVE children and DO NOT HAVE children. Even the most patient and stressless (word??) person might find need to worry when there is a new little mouth to feed. I say this because i have no extra mouths to feed, and therefore cannot speak intelligently on the subject.
But back to the point, i have A LOT going on, and i am successful and all ( deadlines sometimes exceptions ;) ) my projects are working out. This means that i do not stress about these things, if they fail, i pick up and start again. Stress is like subconscious complaining. It does not do any good, and most of the time it is harmful to physical and mental health, and can even defeat progress in general. Some people work well with stress, i work well because i will succeed.
Hope that helps!
For goodness sake, it's amazing how much having an extra person on staff drops the level of stress in a department. It's equally amazing how much removing a member of the staff increases the stress level of a department.
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
Now that we live in cities, our visual system is deprived of much of the 'beatiful' input. Instead we have geometric shapes, which architecture employs to make buildings that don't fall down. (Remember when fractals first hit popular media? Eveyone was all 'ooh aah' -- even when you see one for the 100th time, it still has this intriguing beauty. Geomtric shapes don't have this.)
Also, our soundscape has radically changed. Instead of forest voices, we hear whirs and hums of machines. I know personally that my stress level drops immediately when I turn of the computer that has loud fans.
Long story short, our evolution in Africa created brains that was attracted to certain things, and sought them out, becuase they helped us survive. We are deprived of that stimulation these days.
Now, I'm not saying we all need to go back to living in caves, but maybe as a start, we could have more plants in homes, or trees in cities. Perhaps use fractal shapes in our architecture -- an interesting person to look at is the artist Hundertwasser. He drew pictures and designed models of buildings that had a natural appeal. They were based on wavy shapes, not geometric.
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-- Pablo Picasso
So even if the technology reduces stress for the same workload, the workload increases, so that stress remains the same... so that:
DIFFICULTY x WORK = STRESS = a constant
make that your thesis.
J
Any stress I have in my job was not directly caused by technology. But, it is caused because every assumes that technology makes things faster.
As an example, the assumption: we can support a new process before the business has fully defined it because software isn't like buildings, it can be changed in no time.
I don't see things in black and white; I see the gray. Heck, I actually see in color, which makes things more difficult
I don't see how technology can cause stress... I don't need any time to myself... I have to work overtime so that I don't get outsourced.
He was trying to be funny!
Let's see... today I have:
1.) Been diagnosing a poorly designed motorola canopy shot;
2.) spent the first half of the day ordering software (and dealing with accountant/account crap) to upgrade the firmware on a tower that:
3.) died because of a bad amplifier, and now:
4.) it is a 150ft high doorstop, if only because in the process of uploading the firmware, the utility crashed (only works in windows) and it got corrupt firmware, which makes it useless, which:
5.) bites because due to the market area I work in,it appears all tower climbers around here are vastly afraid of heights or money, and last but not least:
6.) have a user associated with my WISP network that apparently clicked the olsentwinsandadonkey.pif file that came in their email, their computer is spamming the tower and breaking it, upsetting every other user on the tower....
Stressed? Um yeah. I provide the technology for other people's lives to be easier.
Don't mean to have a sandy vagina about it, its not always bad, I love the business I am in, and the tools I get to use, the stress just makes it a job.
Don't hate me for complaining,the question was asked and you just picked a good time for the post. (and I still have time to post on slashdot.. priorities??)
And yeah, I know that IT has a strong influence in many of these fields, but it is abstracted from the first-hand death inherent in each.
But without IT many of the deaths would be much less preventable. So while it's not first hand, it cannot be discredited. And what about the navigational systems of airplanes? What if someone in IT for a control tower fucks up and monitoring fails? A plane crashing is one thing, but think of the numbers of planes that could easily collide at a busy airport if there were a systems malfunction.
The basic point is, you can't generalize stress to single field, it varries on a job-to-job basis.
I remember perusing through a book called "Data Smog." It pertained that because the InterWeb has lowered the cost of information that we are in an "information glut," that of which more time is required to search for information, and has actually increased the cost of finding true data. One example of this would be looking through /. replies and weeding out the trolls, offtopic, etc.
The "information glut" due to an increase in tech may have contributed to this stress, and all that crap.
I never read the book.
S
bah.
It led to a massive explosion of "micromanagement" by the bosses back in headquarters who understood little or nothing of conditions on the ground faced by the front line. Local managers who previously had enough authority and "slack" to carve profitable operations suddenly faced unprecendented meddling by ambitious "newbies" who neither spoke the local language nor even tried to understand the local conditions.
When something went right, some schmuck at headquarters took credit for it. When it went wrong, as it almost invariably did, failures were blamed entirely on local personnel.
Not a few of the fall guys wrote long, detailed, bitter postmortems. Look 'em up.
He put his boots up on the table and made a face. "The sig," he smirked. "You can waste your life in search of the sig."
FUCKING MEAN MAN! ;-)
Quack, quack.
people do!
I don't understand how technology could make your job more stressful either, if it is, then it isn't really working now is it. Because the goal is to make things easier.
I see some responses saying how their job in IT is stressful and thats just baloney. If you know your job and can do it properly then you shouldn't be stressed out. If you are, then there are some personal issues you should seek help for.
The only job that should cause you stress is one where your personal safety is at risk such as a firefighter, police officer, in the military, etc.. But I don't think that was the intent of the question... I think the person wanted to know if technology made your life more stressfull, not if changes in technology made your IT job more stressfull.
"Thanks to the remote control I have the attention span of a gerbil."
Hi!
I think you should bear in mind that the concept of "stress" as we think of it is relatively new. In earlier days people would not think of an atmosphere where one was
...as having any down sides at all. Lots and lots of jobs--even "professional" jobs--through history have involved real risk. A lot of software developers are infatuated with the notion that software is a form of engineering--so for fun, let's compare a software developer's job with some of the real engineering disciplines. The comparison might be informative.
Civil engineering
These guys build tunnels, which might cave in; they build bridges, which might collapse; they climb mountains, ford streams, confront wild animals, and deal with all sorts of heat, cold, rain, snow, etc., while surveying.
Comparison: The software "engineer" moves into a new cubicle with a $900 Herman Miller Aeron chair, and bitches because his new cube is one hundred feet further from the cappucino machine.
Conclusion: Software is a lot less stressful.
Electrical engineering
These guys build electrical devices, working in shops or offices with long plastic hooks displayed prominently. What are the hooks for? To pull you off in the event that you are being electrocuted.
Comparison: The software "engineer" is given a new computer with USB mouse and keyboard. Which means his MP3 player has to be plugged into a USB port on the back of the box.
Conclusion: Despite this enormous stress on the poor software guy, the persistent risk of imminent, excruciating death causes us to conclude that the EE's life is just a tad more stressful.
Chemical engineer
As a general rule, ChemE's work in one of three fields. Stuff that blows up; stuff that is incredibly toxic; and stuff that will kill you in some other way. Sometimes (working with liquid hydrogen springs to mind) the stuff can kill you multiple ways.
Comparison: The software "engineer" is stuck working for a dot-com startup that only offers two flavors of smoothies in the company cafeteria on Thursdays. And do you realize how painful a brain freeze from that smoothie can be?
Conclusion:The ChemE trying to identify a "stable" mixture of phosphene and silane (if the explosion doesn't kill you, the nerve gas will) has just a bit more stress to deal with.
Mechanical engineer
These guys lead a cushy life--they sit in an office, working with CAD tools to create neat drawings. Which they give to machinists and other employees to actually build. Except--those "machinists and other employees" are dues-paying members of the United Auto Workers, the United Steelworkers, or the Machinists' Union. You have not known stress until you have had to explain to a Machinists Union shop steward that existing work patterns will have to change.
Comparison: The software "engineer" has to deal with LAN admins in IS. Who may have read the BOFH files. And believed them.
Conclusion: The MechE has more stress.
My point:
If you look at the course of labor history, technology has consistently been used to eliminate expense--almost always labor expense. And the labor that has been eliminated is typically dangerous, routinely debilitating, and generally a lot more "stressful" than any office job that might be created instead. Where you might make a point about stress is when technology is used to raise productivity (e.g. we give everybody a computer and expect them to type their own email; as a result we don't have secretaries for each middle manager any more, and most companies do not have a mail room staff). If we implement technology that saves 20% of a person's time, we then only need four people to do the work that five used to do. I submit that that change does not--per se--cause stress. If the company fires one of those five, saying that he wasn't needed because of the new technology, that would cause stress. I think that's stress caused by a whip-cracking employer, not stress induced by new technology.
I would liket to negate a lot of the posts I see. I believe the question was very specific.
"What is the influence of technology on stress?"
The answer to this cannot be "Tech is not stressful" The preceding quote would be an answer to the question:
"Is technical work more or less stressful than other work?"
So I stand by my hypothesis.. It's Interesting god Damn It! Sombebody mod this up!
J
The implementation of a mandatory logon to our corporate instant message client has made my job easier as well as more stressful. It is easier because I can ask a co-worker a question a lot faster with it than if I send him/her an email. But it has also introduced a little stress in my life as the IM server logs when everyone logs in and out of the system thus my boss can track when we get to work and when we leave for the day. If you are a few minutes late he asks you what took so long to get to work, by a few minutes I literally mean 1-2 minutes. The installation of a door badge system at our office has also added to this stress level as he checks these logs also and asks the same questions if you are 1-2 minutes late for work. I have not had to have my boss ask about me being tardy yet but the first day the systems where in a coworker of mine was asked about his tardiness and our boss was not joking with him.
"Really, I'm not out to destroy Microsoft. That will just be a completely unintentional side effect." Linus Torvalds
I've been noticing lately that a long day spent at a computer is really bad for my head. I leave work, and feel like I've just had another day sucked away... pretty empty from plodding along at a workstation.
I'm also finding that the always-on, always-connected aspect of email, google, and IMs leave me in a weird, permanetly tense state.
My girlfriend well... ex-girlfriend, pointed out that Im much grumpier, less receptive to her after hours spent at a computer.
TripInvite.com: Group Travel Made Simple Evit
This works pretty well -- except for when it is actually true.
For example, my phone sometimes does not ring when somebody calls me (not sure why, but probably related to my carrier (hint: rhymes with Shint). It works great for an excuse. However it backfires when we have to do a deployment at 2:00 AM and people might need to be in touch with me. In that case I have to be up and on the conference call (or check in every so often) to make sure that they *really* don't need me.
Oh well.
-- The Genesis project? What's that?
"A lot of stress is caused by poor coping skills. You can say "no," you know. In fact, in my experience the ability to say "no" is important. All my managers have had that skill, and that's how they got their jobs. "
NO Dasmegabyte, you can't have a raise. NO Dasmegabyte you can't have time off. NO Dasmegabyte, we can't lower your copayment, and we don't cover that life-saving procedure. NO Dasmegabyte, you can't play unreal on our computers. NO Dasmegabyte, we can't pay you overtime. Something about new government rules.
NO Dasmegabyte, bathroom breaks are 30 minutes apart. Do that again and your fired. NO Dasmegabyte, I will not be your friend. Now get back to work.
No. I'm a parent and a husband. Technology is the least of my concerns.
"Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past." -- George Orwell
The only stress that I have had is from those that you are working with that don't know what they are talking about. It isn't the poeple that know nothing or the people that know alot that cause problems, but is the people that think they know something and start talking out of their ass.
Most of the time you can just brush them off but sometimes it cuases you to get so frustrated.
Is the pain worth it, just to see defeat in the eyes of your enemy?
To be honest, I love the technology, but when it needs attention, I hate it.
Case in point, I recently came home, and within minutes, had to reconfigure my router/firewall (conflicting with my wife's work), I had to call directv because the new card they sent me has mysteriously fscked up my TV. My new TiVo has decided to switch stations to record what it thinks we like, so in the middle of some previously approved show, my kids find themselves suddenly watching Barney, who is dinosaura non grata in my house. Now I have to do maintenance on the TiVo so it won't do that anymore. It's not the technology, it's the goddamned maintenance, especially the 'features' installed by the manufacturers, that drives me nuts.
I know what I'm getting into when I crack open the TiVo or triple secure my wireless network. I don't appreciate having to do this crap on a day-to-day basis.
My take it that without technology , there would be other things that caused stress. That said, there is a way that modern technology (especially telecommunications) increases stress. The reasoning is as follows:
/. is more and more becoming a place where I dump my ideas...gotta move these to my website someday.
Modern technologies enable things to be done at a faster pace. They also enable people to be contacted by pretty much anyone, anytime, regardless of locations. Finally, modern media enable you to get news from places you would never otherwise heard news from. All these conspire together to increase the productivity expected from workers, enable unexpected distractions and disturbances, and make you worry about all kinds of things (like an Indian-Pakistani nuclear conflict while you live in the USA). I could imagine that this increases your stress level compared to, say, before the industrial revolution, where you would just be sitting in a room of your house where you'd make chairs for clients who would just haze to wait until you were finished.
Heh,
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
I wouldn't call it the evolution of stupidity in the users. It is, however, an overall de-evolution of users. This is by management design. Payroll is almost always the most expensive part of any business. In efforts to manage cost, businesses will invariably utilize available technology to replace *thinking* workers (skilled, intelligent people cost more) with workers who can't think their way out of a paper bag. This is natural, because idiots cost less and are more readily replaced.
Lowering labor cost is a Holy Grail of most corporate management teams. Be it outsourcing to countries like India and lovely China, or doing everything possible to dumb-down any job so the only requirement is a pulse and an ability to follow simple (elementary school level) directions. ("Hi, thank you for calling tech. support...No, sir...I'm sorry...I have to follow the script...I don't know that...I can't...did you reboot?...but I...my head would explode if I tried to answer that question...")
Don't blame users for being stupid. Blame management. I'll say again: it's by design. </rant>
Stress in keeping the significent other happy.
My favorite study concerned the stress experienced by pilots landing on aircraft carriers. The idea was to measure parameters such as heartbeat and blood pressure using a seat cushion with embedded sensors. ... same thing.
As in all good studies, you need a control group so they also put the cushions under the navigators. It was observed that the navigators cushions were the ones that came out soaked!
A similar study of air traffic controllers in Toronto atc vs. office clerks found the same thing. The clerks had much more stress than the controllers.
Surgeons vs. orderlies (who literally have to take shit from everyone)
THEREFORE:
Technology that makes you feel more in control will reduce stress. Technology that makes you feel less in control will increase stress.
My hair-brain bosses cause me great stress. Guns and Knives are an important technological development for dealing with the idiot problem at work.
With that in mind, has technology made us less fearful? I'm sure the average person is much more fearful. People fear change and the unknown. Personally, I find myself less fearful. However I can't say if that is due to technology or my own maturity (as you get older you suffer less stress).
UNIX/Linux Consulting
Technology has managed to make my life easier. To get the same amount of output requires less effort on my part than it did 2, 4, 6, etc. years ago. However, in those years the expectations of my output have gone up. Stressful doesn't necessarily mean the process is harder. Rather, in my life stress is usually caused by the expecation that more will be done in less time, to such an extent as to push me as far as possible in my capabilities. That's when life becomes stressful: when you live at the edge of your capability.
Thus, the process is getting easier, while life is staying just as difficult, and just as stressful. The insatiability of humankind seems to indicate that this process will continue ad infinium. Technology helps us get more done in less time, but never are we expected to be satisfied with previous levels of output. Were that the case, we could all just work 1 hour a week or so on a massive super-farm to put in our fair share for food and call it a day. Of course then there would be none of the other things that occupy us (because we quit, remember?).
In summary, life is just a difficult as ever, but for each unit of output the process is requiring less work thanks to technology.
Douglas Adams: "What we have is technology, but what we want is stuff that really works." and the best way to tell if something is technology: "It comes with a manual."
Technology keeps me in a job, which is stressfull, but which without life might be even more stressful. Stuff that works makes my life easier.
/shrug
I agree with several posters that asking the slashdot users about their stress levels caused (or related to technology) will be too biased for an adequate.
I believe a much more interesting study would be to look at the baby boomer age group 40-65. Many of these did not grow up technology all around them like we did. (I am at the younger end of the range and have been in the IT field for 22 years.)
I mention the baby boomer age group because I frequently observe people in this age group annoyed by remote controls, problems with their PC, other people on cell phones, etc. We all be annoyed by these technological "improvements". However, most of the baby boomers lived a good portion of their adult lives without all these conveniences.
I would suggest you: Create a survey -- get some help so you don't bias the survey unfairly -- and survey a sample of baby boomers -- make sure you include a proper representative portion from more rural areas -- then analyze the results.
Be sure to post back your paper (if you get an A!).
Good luck.
Clippy is way more sinister than that. He is Microsofts way of saying that because you are stupid, here is someone obviously smarter than you to give you advice.
Try getting to an online IQ test, then feed the questions into clippy. He will probably respond "It looks as if you're trying to make a list, do you want some help with that?"
What is clippy's IQ? Less than a monkey, obviously. Less than a rodent. Less than a nematode.
Microsoft thinks you are less intelligent than a nematode worm.
... and I guess they may be right if you haven't removed clippy from you computer yet :-)
I choose to remain celibate, like my father and his father before him.
I USED to get stressed out at work. But, I realized that they can't fire me, because I am the only programmer. Not a single person around here can even write a simple Excel macro.
So now I just don't care. That is the real stress reliver JUST "DON'T CARE".
The faster and better I work, the more work I am asked to do. So now, I come in, I work 8 hours and what doesn't get done, can be worked on tomorrow. I leave my work at work and never, ever put in one minute of overtime.
If I ever did get let go, all the work I have done would eventually break, and since I never have time to create procedures or document my code, they would have to ask me back. Can you say $200/hr consulting fees?
Oh no, hear comes the pointy haired boss. She has no clue what slashdot is and can never tell if I am working or not. Gotta get back to --- what was I doing?? Oh yeah, I don't care.
- I live the greatest adventure anyone could possibly desire. - Tosk the Hunted
How high is the correlation between stress and techs? That is a very broad question. You may do well to narrow it down.
Technology certainly can help people to do their job. But the fact is, you still devote the same amount of time each day to do your job. For example, if you are an office worker and you relied on calculator and pencil/paper method. You may accomplish your task in a quarter of time using a computer, but you don't get to go home. You get the next task. Being required to handle more work may cause more stress, but OTOH, computers save you from menial and repetitive jobs.
Also, I suppose whether it causes more or less stress depends on what your job is and how much you like your job. A computer is also a tool. How well a tool perform certainly causes more/less stress. For example, if your computer is a Gateway, you will be stressfull enough to want to throw it accross the room. Another example, some geek will be in heaven working on linux boxen while they will be ready to punch their monitors working on Windows boxen.
Besides, we all know that work is not the only thing done on computers. Games and other fun things (editing video, making music etc.) help deal with stress.
Me, I am happy with my OS X and can work on Windows even though I hate it much.
You are kind of asking the wrong people. I, like most of the people here, work in a technical position. Technology *is* my job. Advances in technology have led to advances in the technology I create in my job, but the level of stress remains the same. It is not the technology that is making my job stressful but the job itself, because jobs are sometimes stressful (a fact of life). The line between the technology I am creating and the technology I use to create technology is a blurry one.
You should be posting this question to a discussion group for lawyers or teachers or some other profession that is a consumer of technology but not a creator of technology.
Life is like a web application. Sometime you need cookies just to get by.
I personally don't get stressed out at my job about my deadlines (I work as a programmer), I worry more about what I'll be doing if I ever want to move on from where I am. It used to be that a Degree in Computer Science is all you would need, but It really doesn't seem that way anymore. I worry more about what I'll be doing 10 years from now than I worry about what I have to do today.
I've looked for on the net a couple of times, but didn't manage to find it.
Does anybody know of a patch that turns clippy into Tux, and then has him make smart-arsed comments about windows at random intervals?
Norman Cook's Ode to Sl
When I was hacking for fun (from ages 8-16), technology seemed to relieve my stress. If I had a bad day at school, I could come home and hack, code, build webpages, etc. and feel better.
Now that I develop for a living, technology seems to build my stress level. Sure, I still enjoy what I do, but it seems that the more I have to surround myself with technology, deal with shifts in technology, and keep my products compatible with the latest technology, the more I want to just scream and shove my head into my monitor.
My lack of God, it's Trotsky!
Technology neither introduces nor relieves stress; it just is. Some technology is well-designed and useful, some isn't. Some users are well-designed, and effectively use technology; some not. As a good tool user, when I have high-quality, appropriate tools, my day is less stressful because I can be effective and efficient in my work, which promotes my job satisfaction.
Technology can sometimes appear problematical because work force gets replaced by technology. However, it is frequently true that while the cost to the employer (in terms of hours and net outlay) in that process is reduced, the amount of "stuff" for which someone must be responsible is not reduced; and therefore, the responsibility per person (and the associated stress) is increased. Technology plays a role in this vicious cycle, of course, since the work-force reduction is made possible by technology; but it is really a function of short-term thinking, bottom-line-oriented management decision-makers.
Or, to summarize, "Technology doesn't kill people. People kill people."
Technology ends up reducing my stress because I have good tools and know how to use them, and because I have a reasonably competent boss. But that's me. I don't think one could generalize from my experience.
Purely anecdotal, but I've been planted 5 inches from my computer screen since I was 5 (over 20 years ago), and I still have good vision. Sure, I get stress headaches all the time, but my actual ability to see hasn't been damaged.
I think eyesight loss is mostly hereditary.
-If
Run a pencil-and-paper RPG campaign with your far-off friends: Gametable!
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it actually took me a few seconds to grasp that... Funny.
nosig today
Technology has imposed stress in my life in a different manner. The mere existence of it! Dont get me wrong, I love working with computers but all the ermerging technologies make it hard to concentrate on a particular field and trying to keep up with them is near impossible as a bachelor with a social life. Once I get home from work the last thing in the world I want to do is even look at my computer. I can't imagine trying to study for new certifications and keep up on my reading when I have a family someday. Hopefully by then I will be middle/upper management and be able to slack off all day :]
(With that said, I think it's failing.)
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
we would never have the tomes of the BOFH.
As a help desk professional, I deal with stress daily, its how I manage it that counts.
thelikesofwhich.com
However, it is undeniable that technology brings stress with it if you don't apply it in the correct way. Examples:
If you don't let technology live your life, there is not much stress. Techonology helps to relieve it, actually. There is a lesson in this for the average /. geek.
We all know there's no stress in the tech world. Not even when you do a minor job for an old person, and they think they can bug the living shit out of you FOR FREE from then on out. Not when the warranty dispatch company calls to bug the shit out of you about a work order THEY NEVER EVEN SENT. Not when someone needs a SQL back end for a website programmed, and expect it the next day. Noooooo, no stress in the tech world.
What I've learned to avoid stress...
Never, EVER, take on a project involving Excel.
Never do support for senior citizens.
If someone refers to their computer as 'that infernal machine', can't name the parts correctly, etc... refer them to your competitor.
If a client that is past due on their payment for a completed project calls... tell em to get screwed, and refer them to your competitor.
Learn the mantra... "Phone support is a 30 dollar minimum, plus a dollar a minute after the first 15 minutes."
Learn the mantra... "No, I charge by the hour, and there is no proration."
Of course, these don't work for the salary and wage techs, but they work well for freelance.
Steve's Computer Service, Hobbs, NM
why would your anchor text not say UCLA? It's not like we wouldn't find out....
-n-
NM CI
Ahhh. PROGRESS!!!
Technology itself has never really stressed me out. What has stressed me out is other people's lack of experience or knowledge of technology while working at various levels of (l)user support.
As in: Problem Found Between Keyboard and Chair.
Or: we have an ID-10-T problem at this workstation.
Yes, those jokes are oldies but are so damned appropriate. Some things just make you giggle when you're burned out from this crap.
- Semper Ubi Sub Ubi!
Stress? Not from my systems. It's from the don't-getitude all around me. I'm constantly fighting with people who have more power and less understanding.
Scott Adams has documented this phenomemon in one of his Dilbert management books.
Dude. you're asking slashdotters. Slashdotters LIVE to find problems with technology, so I would think that you're skewing results toward YES, MORE STRESS answers.
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Technology doesn't cause me stress, directly. Computers are great, networks make life fun, DBs make finding things easier, etc.
Stress causing things are a computer that dies right in the middle of a task someone else demands I get done yesterday, networks going down when someone requires an electronic submission, DBs failing to have the information I know exists which is required by someone for some reason, etc
Things such as technology enabling world-wide cheap communication do not cause me stress. Executives determining that gee, world-wide cheap communication allows me to get someone in some artificially lowered salary country to do my job causes me stress.
Basically, it's what's done with technology that causes stress, not the technology itself. Even nuclear weapons are not a reason for stress, but rather the unstable individuals that might be able to use them.
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
How in the f*ck would I know?
I've never had a job w/o email. The only thing that's really new is Yahoo instant mess. on my desktop.
Maybe that and I don't need to bring in a separate CD player to listen to music any more.
or an air traffic controller, who didn't do their job correctly, people died. Which may have led to his death. Miscalculations in programming too can cause computer error which can lead to problems.
The comparison here is more of direct cause. IT people do not directly cause people to die but based on what they've designed, could cause accidents that may lead to deaths. It's easier to relate and understand a situation where a fireman fails to put out a fire in time which leads to loss of lives than it is to a programmer that writes code to round down instead of round up, thus causing a miscalculation in the software that eventually leads to a disaster that claims lives. Granted that at that point in time, the programmer does not realize their mistake because it's too far into the future and difficult to foresee and thus does not cause him stress directly. What about the supposedly computer glitch that failed to set off alarms that eventually led to the East Coast blackout? No deaths reported directly though.
Anyhoo, this could be a small example of The Butterfly Effect perhaps? (The theory not the movie).
"Stress" is just a limiting factor on productivity.
1000 years ago, people would endure the same amount of "stress", but their reward was simply that they'd be able to eat and live until the next day. Now they're enduring the stress for a nice house and car (or whatever).
[Insert gender-neutral language to this next paragraph as you like -- it just makes it harder to read.]
Modern stress is caused by a man's desires. He is willing (or able) to endure a certain amount of stress in order to achieve a lifestyle. If he chooses a less expensive lifestyle, stress is less. If he is unable to endure much stress, that will limit the lifestyle available to him.
(Another part of it is the natural ups and downs of life -- things don't always go your way -- but that factor hasn't changed.)
So no, technology doesn't cause stress. Desires lead to stress.
I believe one of the major religions makes this point as well.
compare and contrast the civilization now with that 1 year ago, 10 years ago, 100 years, etc. First of all, technology occurs in booms, so you if you want to more data: research historical accounts. Now, you might find interesting patterns if you try to compare "techno-revolution" eras with periods of slow progression. Perhaps people weren't as stressful during the slow periods. However, one era's slow progression (like say, dark ages) may have seemed revolutional. There are other factors that will control EMOTION too, So results should be relative to perspective from that age.
Lets look at todays perspective. If we assume that emotions are ONLY effected by the stress we experience from technology, then you may be on to something. You may even find a correlation. But that assumption would be bogus. Take, for example, the differing perspectives on violent video games, violent tv, controversial radio, SCO, etc.
Personally, I have found technology to be challenging, frustrating, and rewarding. Take Procmail for example. I use it to sort my incoming email into different folders, while many others try to use it to sort out spam. I subscribed to a few high volume mailing lists, so I was always worrying about deleting an important mail by mistake. Now procmail decreases the probability of that event occuring which decreases my stress at the cost of the stress with learning something new. The point is that you will always find stress in technology because many times you have to learn something new (which *someone* probably spent years trying to model/program/study/invent/etc.). But why do many people interpret this stress as bad? Could it be that they are afraid of learning something new, or rather feel that they have learned "enough"? Assuming our minds will "forget" stuff after a lengthy period of time, then our knowledge appears to decrease over time. Doh! Time to apply for that grad degree...or two. Or could it be that people are just lazier now, so their stress levels are relatively higher? This could also explain the explosion in obesity and job outsourcing from the US -psychological disorders aside-, but lets not go there. Or could it be that technology is really just a BAD thing because it only complicates our lives? Hmm, sounds pretty logical and open minded... in a sun-revolves-around-the-earch sort of way, but then we would have to attribute the computational solutions which broke the Enigma cipher as bad too.
Stress isn't a bad thing. Repeat after me, "stress makes me feel alive". By definition, we stress during sex, excercise, reading, etc. We can stress over anything. How about this: try correlating "laziness" or "productivity" versus "stress" in certain cultures/businesses/states over time. Definitions will vary.
...small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri...
This guy is going about it right. For research, espically of human subjects, you notice something that you think might be related, like technology and stress. Well just because you think it might be related, doesn't mean it is. The next step is to gather some observational evidence. This can be watching people, taking surveys (as in this case), and so on. You then see if the observational evidence supports your theory. It's not going to give you anything more than a correlation, but if you don't even see that, you need to rethink your theory.
If the observational evidence is in line with your theory, you can then move on to designing experiements to actually test it. But you need to do the observation first. One reason is that experiements, espically with people, are expensive. You'd better not be wasting a bunch of money on something you have no support for at all other than an intuition. Another is that the observational data can help you decide HOW to design an experiment to test your theory. It's not so easy as just going and doing a test, you have to design one that will test what you want and can actually be implemented. Doubly hard with humans, who can fingure out what you are trying to do to them.
So, provided he's planning on actually running the experiments, this is the first step to good science. Also, being that it is just an undergrad term paper, he may just write about the obvservational data. There is nothing wrong with gathering obversational evidence, analyzing it, then writing a paper on what it could indicate and how experiments could be done to test that.
Stress is a response, not a stimulus.
Well, hey, I didn't spend all those years playing Dungeons and Dragons and not learn a little something about courage.
Since we're talking about Clippy, I might as well post the following link to get an instant +5 Funny post.
(PS: +5 funny posts are almost inevitably posted by Karma Whores. Discuss.)
I would have to say that explosives are the most abused technology in all of history.
Have computers brought stress, yes.
You now can do things you couldn't do, and maangement sees them and expects everything done that way.
So the presentation that someone with nothing else to do made pretty now becomes the norm. And others, who have real jobs with other outputs, feel pressure to conform to the norm.
Where it used to be you'd get a request in the snailmail (you can tell how old I am), you now get it email and folks expect an answer back in a twinkle because it can be done, because they have no idea what you have to do besides wait for their email.
You can now work from anywhere, so the expectation is that after you go home, you'll log back in. Too many times my time card shows another hour or more after dinner. When I really should be exercising or doing something completely different.
Go off to an important meeting and rather than decompress and figure out what it meant and what was important about it, you feel compelled to log on from the hotel because you can.
You end up being terribly quick and efficient and tactical, but the long range perspective suffers.
Voice mail, more of the same.
I'm less than a year away from retirement, not expecting to quit working, but to go on to something else where it can be put completely aside when the work day is done. The acceleration over my 38 year career has been significant, empowering and stressful. It has been a fun ride. I wish each of you as much joy.
The advanced technology I see on a regular basis is in the communications field; phones, computers, etc. These technologies greatly increase the speed and accuracy of the promulgation of information.
Technology increases stress by quickening the pace of change. Executives now think they have the information to constantly reorganize and implement new processes. Uncertain working conditions and processes definitely increase stress levels for workers.
OTOH technology makes many jobs easier. Computer, phone and broadband technology allow me to work from home, decreasing stress caused by a long commute (especially in the crummy weather we have in the Bay Area right now). These technologies also allow me to attend to personal business without worrying about missing any critical issues at work. And the Net gives me access to needed information which reduces the uncertainty in an unfamiliar task.
He's gathering observational data. As I noted in another post, that's the first step to designing a good experiement. You notice something in the world that you believe to be related. You then observe it to see if it looks like there is a relation, or if you just saw a one-off phenomena. THEN you go on to designing experiments. You first make sure you are at least in the right ball park before going and wasting your instution's money.
We are expected to deliver faster because in many cases technology improves by allowing us to do the same task faster and faster or in a more efficient manner (think of micro-waves, dish washers, GHz processors, High RPMs hard disks, etc.). In turn, it is supposed to give us more time. But what do we do, or rather what are we expected to do with that extra time?
How come we are working over time when technology allows us today to print/write/code/format/spellcheck/indent/syntaxhi ghlight/etc. much faster than before?
I have that awkward impression that I'm expected not only to be quicker, but to produce a lot more than before simply because my printer is faster, my cell phone sends me bigger SMS messages, my CPU is idle waiting for me, telling me that I'm too slow... The human brain's clock speed hasn't improved for a little while, but, mind you, I'm not up to date with the latest e-news on the subject...
A human body is designed to sustain a high level of stress only for a short period of time. In a stressful situation, our blood pressure and adrenaline level rises, and we are ready to either fight or escape the source of stress. In many technology related work environments, workers undergo such a level of stress almost every day and, if not dealt with properly, can lead to the equivalent of a MechWarrior's thermal shutdown; your body says "Sorry boss, I know they're shootin' their lasers at ya, but I give up".
I remember before online-banking I didn't mind waiting in line at the bank. Now, it is somehow less conceivable to wait for 15mn, when you can do the same transaction in 30 seconds from a web browser. Did that buy me 14:30 mn of free, relaxing time? Somehow, I'm not sure... Since I didn't spend 15mn meditating, relaxing, looking around, standing up, while waiting in line at the bank, I can instead continue my coding... In the long run, which alternative is more desirable for a human being?
For instance, you assume that everyone who ownas a computer is completely capable of using it. This really isn't the case. I know relatives who are completely literate, good people who use clippy to quick search help things. (1/4 times, it ends in a phone call to me seeing if I can help.) But, just because YOU are insulted by Clippy doesn't mean he doesn't help thousands of other people (and save me dozens of questions from my non-computer savvy uncle and grandparents). It says nothing of their intelligence, just their familiarity with computers.
I'm really dissapointed in the lack of Porn(AKA technological stress releiver) and Office Space references in this discussion. Shame on you all.
I'd bet that technology has made the average office worker's life _easier_ with education, but not actually less stressful. While email processing and macros might make it easier to send out and organize correspondence, that assumes someone learns how to use those things. And don't forget how technology tends to make monitoring office workers easier.
I'd say the one area where stress _always_ increases with technological progress is in pure IT. Every change and new idea requires further education, and you are expected to know all the details of each change. Things may get simpler from a hands-on use perspective, but the learning process not only never stops, it keeps getting faster.
Well why would anyone use iTunes to try and browse the internet....
How can I be stressed if I get to my office in a public university. Spend 3 hours reading every single news paper out there. If I do not speak the language it is written in. No problems, just babel fish. Then I adjurn for a two hour luch... eventually in the local pub.
/.
Then I eventually reply my e-mails or read slashdot. Or if my supervisor is around I start MATLAB and make a couple of pretty 3D graphs....
At which time I adjurn until the next day....
Technology stressing me? Not a chance I have the time to read
Where is my mind?
Technology failures causes me stress and I dont mean the Sys/netadmin systems failures. I'm talking about when my PDA phone breaks down.
I love my Kyocera 7135. It helps me track all my projects and appointments, my phone numbers, and I can surf where ever I am. However, I'm a tad clumsy and I've dropped my Kyocera 7135 maybe 3-4 times. That was enough to cause my phone to a pretty undependable state. Right now, my phone crashes a couple times a week and once every few weeks, it crashes bad enough where I lose all my data and I have to resync. Now that's stressful.
I was out of town when this happened and I really needed my contacts to get in touch with my friends (it's been years since I memorized phone numbers.. remember the pager days with pager code? =P). It was quite stressful to not have all my contacts and all the new data since my last sync disappeared.
Technology is a wonderful thing but as a part of evolution, technology becomes a part of our lives. When they fail, it causes us stress. For those of you who dont have PDA phones, think about the last time your hard drive failed to a unrecoverable state. Even with backups, the amount of time you have to spend to replace it is stressful.
Since the invention of time saving devices we've gotten less time not more.
This is because we've gotten used to things getting done faster. We're pressured to accomplish more in less time.
Such is the infinite Grace of Popeye.
does the fact that i'm currently stressed out about a computer programming project count as technology increasing stress?
But, the technology allows us to generate a much higher GDP overall. So, the stress stays about the same as it always has. We all get more done with less because the technology allows us to. And we all do what we can, in terms of stress, time, etc.
So, yes, technology has made my job easier. But, no it hasn't reduced the overall amount of stress in my life.
Incidentally, has there ever been research into whether or not stress levels in a population actually do fluctuate? That seems like a dumb question, but I have to wonder if the answer for large populations isn't "No".
Please mod this post only if you think others should/n't read this. I have enough ego^H^H^Hkarma. Thanks!
The answer will depend. In general since my role in any company or insitution I work for is to provide technology resources, availablity of tech makes my job more complex. However, in genreal I seem to enjoy it. Maybe it's just the whole kid getting to play with new toys thing.
What about that dumb-looking CG dog that appears by default when you go to search for a file in Windows XP Pro? What kind of a "pro" would consider that a useful feature?
Breakfast served all day!
How about going to a university who can't beat its crosstown rival in basketball or football?
Oops, you already know about that. Let me clarify:
How about being an alum of a university who can't beat its crosstown rival in basketball or football? Now that's stressful!
Most technological advances are not intended to "make your job easier". They might allow you to do certain tasks more rapidly or more efficiently, but this doesn't mean your overall "job" becomes any easier, because all of these technological advances lead to rising expectations. It's like mistakenly believing "labor-saving" devices are the same as "time-saving" devices.
Now, it is somehow less conceivable to wait for 15mn, when you can do the same transaction in 30 seconds from a web browser. Did that buy me 14:30 mn of free, relaxing time? Somehow, I'm not sure...
I've previously thought about the issues you outlined above, and I've come to the conclusion that if there is something in my life which gives me back a certain amount of time, it is my responsibility to fill that time the way I see fit. If I don't do that, then the universe will fill it for me.
Now, I may have to consciously fill that time with slacker time, but what's wrong with that? I'd rather "waste" time on my own terms than let someone else do it for me. After all, it's the only real resource over which I have control. Everything else ultimately gets shared with everyone else, whether or not I like it. Granted, there are these things we call "commitments" that take my time, but I actually do have the choice whether or not to fulfill each one of those. I just have to deal with the potential fallout if I decline one or more of those. Then again, there may not be actual fallout for some of them; I may just be afraid of nothing.
Please mod this post only if you think others should/n't read this. I have enough ego^H^H^Hkarma. Thanks!
Everything you say is correct. But I think sometimes people point out that fact so they can instantly decredit a claim that is discomforting for them to consider without giving it too much thought. Remember, wherever there is causation, there will be correlation, so correlation isn't such a bad place to start looking.
f 00 /family.html
Here's a sociological study that tries to construct causal relationships based on interviews with subjects. If the original poster is reading this, he might want to consider looking going up a directory or two and poking around that website:
http://www.cs.ucsd.edu/users/goguen/courses/275
Blindly looking for clusters of points in a large set of data doesn't show causal relationships. It's harder than that. But some sciences do try to show it. Sociology is big on that, so is molecular Biology, from what I've seen of it.
Probably the biggest change with all this technology is how fast life is these days. They say that the speed of life/business and everything in general is 10 times what your parents, parents used to endure. The fact that people can reach me anytime, anywhere and so easily (i mean it takes time and effort to hand write a letter) means that more work comes my way, and it's a constant flow. I appreciate voicemail, that is, being able to sit back and review in my own time - but it's use seems a rarity in the days of cells, pagers and instant messaging. *sigh* the age of information? the age of overload (hello ADHD) more like.
----------------------------
Esobofh - Currently drinking fresh mango juice.
I purposly turnoff or ignore my cell phone at irregular but frequent intervals in order to aviod the situation you just described. When I first started this strategy some people got a little peeved, but once they figured out that I wasn't going to change my habits, well the voicemails got freindlier. I figure if i demand more privacy than I want then I'll be happy with what I get, its worked so far.
The problem with web applications is not just broken browsers. The problem is the environment itself. Nowadays with the right language and libraries, it's not even that hard to store state on the server. But you're still dealing with a very dumb client, which can display a few types of pre-made widgets, dump the state of those widgets back to you, and maybe use an overwrought scripting language to manipulate those widgets. People want portable web apps that do all sorts of things the web environment was never designed to do.
Let's face it: the web is not a great place to build a usable GUI. It's a downright terrible place, in fact.
Gates' Law: Every 18 months, the speed of software halves.
I don't think that there necessarily has to be a correlation between technology and stress. Not that there isn't, just like there may or may not be a correlation between stress and showing up to work on time. If you get your routine down, you will be on time. If you wake up in time, you won't be late.
Stress is created by improper management of things. Manage your time improperly, and you will have stress. Manage your employees improperly, and you will have stress. Manage your technology improperly, or your projects improperly, and you will have stress.
Stress is bad, and it kills. There are ways to overcome it, but you have to be willing to make sacrifices to get rid of stress, which might mean pushing back a deadline, or hiring more staff, or something along those lines. Office environment, ergonomics, working with co-workers who have a high level of skill; these are things that can reduce stress.
Another thing that bothers me is how software, sometimes hardware manufacturers present you with "the latest" of whatever it is that they sell, and then describe to you how it will make your life easier, and why version (+1) of their product is better than the current version, and why you should shell out a couple hundred grand for it.
I think that it is better to ask "Can this computer do this for me?", rather than allowing a representative try to talk you in to buying an expensive product. With the outsourcing phenomena that is going on, software products and software companies, in many people's minds, are always going to have a certain amount of financial and job-related stress accompany them.
The concept of "environment" needs to be extended into the workspace, and into the human interactions that we have with each other day in and day out. So not only does industrial waste, improperly managed, pollute our rivers and lakes, but stress, improperly managed, pollutes our work environment. How much technology went into that top of the line ergonomic chair, that fancy expensive keyboard, or that articulating keyboard tray? Technology, by definition, can be very helpful; it can reduce stress and increase productivity. But reducing stress "costs money", money that many employers don't have, or aren't willing to spend. It is unfortunate. Technology is being used to do what: increase profits? save lives? make things easier for the consumer?. We have to intentionally go out and apply technology to stress reduction, and bingo!
I don't think that there needs to be any correlation between technology and stress. I think that it is entirely possible to use technology and not be stressed out. Furthermore, if you do find a correlation between stress and technology, take your sample environments and remove the technology, and I bet you will still have stress.
People create stress by not managing it in the first place. Technology magnifies things that already exist. The drive for wealth and profits creates stress; technology focused on creating more wealth and profits will do the same. The drive to make things easier for the consumer creates stress; technology focused on the making things easier for the consumer will do the same.
The drive to reduce stress reduces stress; applying technology to the drive to reduce stress will do the same.
Like he's really gonna get any answers from an ask slashdot? When was the last time there was a useful answer on ask slashdot. I don't think I've ever seen one.
I've found an interesting thing among myself and my friends. It seems that many of us have become so used to our technology that when something breaks we feel stressed and a little off center until we have it replaced or fixed. I thought that might be an interesting thing to note in talking about this. Now, I'm not certain as to whether this is a new stress caused by technology or a manifestation of how that technology helps us to normally reduce stress. Have others experienced this? Or are me and my friends just weird?
When I go to make a comment on /., and, because I type extremely fast, I hit 'submit' before the '20 second rule' has expired. Then, I have to wait *another* 20 seconds, but sometimes I los track of elapsed time, and click at 19 seconds, and have to wait another 20 seconds..ARGGHHH!!
;)
Or, when I click submit, just as I notice that I put in a borked HTML tag...
THAT'S stress, baby.
I disagree. This issue is likely more related to the expansion of the user base. I think it's unreasonable to expect every technology user to become an expert; especially considering the proliferation of technology in our everyday lives. For a technology tool to be useful it must also contain a certain amount of intuitive capabilities. Intuition is generally derived from past experience. Since developers and systems designers typically have control over what and how information is presented to the user it is not always practical to expect the user to just "know" what to do next. Perhaps they could burn time reading the poorly constructed directions that the developer created but the reality is usually such that the user just needs to get a task accomplished. Not to become an expert in the technology?
btw...a broken browser is a relative observation. Firfox is "broken" to me when I view certain pages that work fine in IE and Netscape.
Technology is not limited to computers and electronic things. Technology by definition is the practical application of knowledge. It's the shear number of "practical applications of knowledge" that have me feeling overwhelmed, stressed and out of control. So many applications of technology have left me feeling naive and ignorant despite my best attempts to keep up and the fact that I once was considered to be on top of these things. Now I have to be even more concerned with the possibility that what I learned and applied yesterday being considered foolish and flawed tomorrow.
Stress is a reaction to an environmental pressure. The proliferation of new technology certainly has increased mental and physical environment pressures. Someone or something will be affected and therefore stress will always be an absolute consequence of new technology.
When I was studying the history of technology, I thought a professor at York University named George Grant was incredibly insightful in his analysis. He pointed out that technologies necessarily manifest the values of the cultures that create them. Computers are a great example, because having a society that operates through corporations with a feudal governing structure have resulted in computers that are based on a similar structure. File permissions are a great example of this. Therefore, if you are in a comfortable position within this feudal structure, you are probably in better shape as far as technologically-based stress than say, someone operating a point of sal system for your company who is dealing with a situation the developers never thought of and didn't implement, and over which you have no overide authority. A tool is only a tool, but at the same time, that tool is the embodyment of the culture and values that produced it. The further you deviate from the values or the power structure that the tool was designed to embody, the more stress you are likely to find.
This reminds of an old joke...
While vacationing in Maine, a man stopped by the general store in a small town and was talking with the shop owner on the front porch.
As they were talking, the phone inside the store started ringing. It rang and rang and rang and, since the store owner didn't seem about to get up and answer it, the vacationer asked "Don't you think you ought to answer that?"
"Nawww," he said, "I put that damned thing in for my convenience, not for its!"
I think it's all in how you look at things...
I support the technology of today as an IT support professional. Technology has increased stress in my life tenfold over decreasing it for the following reasons.
1. My boss can call me on his and my cell phone any time of the day, no matter where I am. Constant communication with someone who has me working when I am on vacation, in meetings, school or even in the bathroom because he did not pay attention to when I showed him what to do and when to do it, definitly builds stress.
2. The constant times when I am on call for support because some user cannot connect to a web page and does not understand that the after hours support are for down systems only. So much for having some private time with my SO.
3. Trying to answer support phone calls of users who ("are too busy to read the directions" or "too important - do you know who I am?") expect you to know everything about any remotely electronic system that you have never seen before.
Don't get me wrong. I like working IT and I tolerate doing support. But for everytime that I can remotely connect to the server and make one change and fix the whole network (thus saving me from driving a couple of hours), there is ten that you just wish you could beat your head into the wall and get rid of the problem by throwing the system out the window.
I think I have a permenant flat spot on my head since Windows 3.0 came out. Yes, I supported windows since ver #1.1
I think I still have the diskettes, any taker's?
As a web developer each advance in technology actually makes my life more stressful. Each successive generation of standards makes the standard more complicated, makes coding things harder as things are "enhanced" and more functionality is added programming concepts get harder and more complicated. Also as soon as something new hits and everyone goes "OH, AH" when they see it elsewhere they immediately want it implimented on our sites (Quite often when it has no logical purpose in the site, or can't even be used for any good purpose, or can't even be linked with what the site goes). Off to learn that new thing, and how it works, did I meantion that you need to learn and impliment the new Tech while your still doing, supporting, and coding the stuff you already have, and amangement excepts you to go learn the new stuff on your own time.
Then their is Microsoft, rewriting everyone of thier languages to be incompatible with the previous generation. They will not even talk about ASP anymore, all thier examples are now in ASP.net primary using C#. And by the way you can't code ASP.net the way you used to Code ASP previously...
UGH Fuck new technology!
Power Corrupts,Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely, leaving one person(group)in charge is absolutely corrupt.
Because no matter how reliable technology is, anything can break. Complex technology tends to fail from obscure problems that ordinary people can't fix or even understand. Our ancestors dealt mostly with things they could see and understand. No matter how reliable your technology is, putting your confidence in a collection of black boxes that you have no idea how to fix is fundamentally different from having confidence in your own ability to cope with problems that you can see.
Here's a short little anecdote that I didn't learn about until recently.
My cheapy workplace gave me a bad monitor with a not-so good video card. After several weeks of use I started getting massive headaches, dizziness, and general nausea. I thought maybe I was sick or I was working too hard. I thought maybe I was stressing out too much. I think I was stressing but it was because of all the ill feelings I was get due to the hardware.
Eventualy I got so stressed my hair started falling out.. literally. I guess there's this condition where this can happen if you face times of continuous high stress (mind you I had these ill feelings everyday).
I learned several things at the optometrist. 1) I was using my glasses wrong (needed for far viewing not close viewing.. ergo i was making my eyes work extra hard. 2) had low refresh freq monitor replaced with nice laptop monitor. 3) blinking and eye resting is very important. If you don't it's easy for your eyes to dry out because you're constantly staring at code. This can be more lethal than you think as dry eyes make it more difficult for you eyes to focus and this constant pressure can also lead to headaches/migranes as I've experienced.
The thing that sucked about it was that I had no real idea what was going on. Back in college I had issues with a monitor that ran low refresh rate and that too gave me headaches. I thought I was just using the comptuer too much but I was using my glasses incorrectly then as well. Who knew?
"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." - Martin Luther King, Jr.
Does technology cause stress? No. People, specifically managers, and their unrealistic expectations from swallowing too much marketing hype and lies, THIS causes stress.
The stress, I think, is more from a complete lack of comprehension. Since everything in a computer happens "under the surface", they have no way of comprehending or appreciating what is happening, so they tend to believe in magic and gain blind faith in the technology, software, whatever.
So when something goes wrong, and there is nothing for them to "look at", or the expectation that "it'll be done in no time" isn't fulfilled, the person using the technology is blamed rather than the defective piece of c**p.
This from a 10 years veteran of computer programming and software development.
When I was studying the history of technology, I thought a professor at York University named George Grant was incredibly insightful in his analysis. He pointed out that technologies necessarily manifest the values of the cultures that create them. Computers are a great example, because having a society that operates through corporations with a feudal governing structure have resulted in computers that are based on a similar structure. File permissions are a great example of this. Therefore, if you are in a comfortable position within this feudal structure, you are probably in better shape as far as technologically-based stress than say, someone operating a point of sale system for your company who is dealing with a situation the developers never thought of and didn't implement, and over which you have no overide authority. A tool is only a tool, but at the same time, that tool is the embodyment of the culture and values that produced it. The further you deviate from the values or the power structure that the tool was designed to embody, the more stress you are likely to find.
Create a survey measuring 2 things: 1) technological level of particpant's computer - meaning P4, P3, or P2...(or equivalents) 2) amount of stress they feel they experience at their computer see if there's a correlation
(appended to the end of comments you post, 120 chars)
cars - while they add a great deal of stress, espiecally my POS, the fact that I get to sleep an extra 3 hours a day make them worth it. Without my car I would have to live much closer to either work or school, both of which are in higher rent areas. pools - if you have ever flown over Phoenix or Las Vegas you know that not only retired people have pools. home automation - if I didn't own a microwave I wouldn't cook (if you can call it that). I espiecally enjoy the round of appluase that my toilet gets when my friends see it flush - those poor sods are still flinging thier feces out the window!
that monkey-faced mush-brained everyman's man with no fucking clue how not to run a country directly into fascism, bigottry and general malaise?
that silver-spooned child of the industrial aristocracy that can't stand intelligent conversation, balanced debate, or looking like what he is?
that asshole that refuses to have anything to do with sciences other than killing?
that FUCK?!
but in the op's case technology has lowered his stress and work load.
Thats not fair there are lots of useful answers on ask slashdot. Their just usually modded down cause they don't attack SCO, Microsoft or the goverment.
is your source of stress.
People need to multi-task in more jobs today because all the single-tasking jobs are getting automated or moved overseas.
You know, it's not so much the multi-tasks that's the problem, because doing different things is really more interesting.
It's that today's typical set of tasks are subject to constant interruption that's the problem.
I know woodworkers that do lots of different things, but they decide when to move from one task to another; not some buzzer, phone, email, or person bursting into the office with "Guess what!?!" Consequently, they're more relaxed .
"Provided by the management for your protection."
There is no correlation between technology and stress -- only between technology MANAGERS and stress.
The safest and most effective way to relieve the stress levels of the products that you create is to document them.
Imagine what you believe is an good level of documentation and multiply it times ten!
If you are in the software creation business then your natural comfort level of what is an adequate level of documentation is much too low.
The best way to do documentation is to get one of the speech to text systems, like Dragon or IBM. Train it till you get to the point where it puts the vast majority of what you say into the correct words on the screen. Get a fast enough processor so that there is no or very little delay between what you say and the appearance of the text.
Get another computer that has the application and the source code that you've written. Put it next to the text-to-speech PC. Don't multitask speech-to-text and your display of the source.
Now get a picture of someone whom you feel stongly attracted to and put it between the two PCs. Pretend that that person is seriously interested in you and your work.
Start the text-to-speech program. Look at the picture and the code screen. Start describing in long precise detail what you did, why you did it, how it works, and why it is so cool that you did it this way. Pretend real hard that the person in the picture between the PCs is seriously interested. Keep talking. Describe why all the other programmers are not doing it right and why your code is so much better. Read the lines of code occasionally.
Go on for hours. Occasionally ramble about things that are off-subject. It doesn't matter.
When you reach the end of your code description.
Stop the text-to-speech program.
DON'T Edit It! Attach the text file of your description to the end of your source code with comment characters or symbols at the beginning of each line if necessary.
You have documented your work in a 21st century style. Your users will be able to follow it and they will get great satisfaction and productivity from your having done it in this way.
One last thing. No matter what anyone says about the 10000 lines of 'comments' attached to the end of your source code file, Don't go back to the 1970's method of code documentation. It doesn't work. This method is superior. Memory is pennies a megabyte. Disk storage of the file is a dollar per gigabyte. Long detailed documentation is priceless.
Thank you,
Simonetta
The new century, the new technology, the new way of doing the same old shit.
:) if you have to work then you're already stressed. wish i could live my life just with my hobbies and no work.
Yes, tech is adding to my stress because I work as a software engineer... ;o)
But stress is added by any job unless you have found the dream job that is only fun (testing games come to my mind
I am working on a finance project since I work for a Swiss private bank. The stress is not due to the tech aspect though, but because of nasty hacks in the code (and process) to accept all the crap the users want to be the norm.
We had to archive 2003 for end of January, but it wasn't possible since the data was wrong and could not be corrected for that date. So we had to keep the data in the DBs for a little longer. That didn't work straight away (we use an embedded object db that dates from 97) so there was an interresting crisis update to the current version (with some modifications) but that was fun.
Now the trouble is to migrate the data and put in place all the hacks so that we store correct data. To do that, we needed some files and we got them on wednesday night while we were aiming to get everything ready for Thursday night...
We managed it, but I had to put lots of extra-time (non paid) just because the upper management was tooo slow to get those files. Not just because they were lazy but because lot's of problems showed up during testing and we realised things were a LOT harder than we thought.
So, in my opinion, stress is not due to technology but to humans using it. And humans being humans, they just think technology is going to solve all their problems. AND FAST!
Well, that's my view of the problem anyway.
Black holes occur when God divides by zero.
Digital cameras can reduce stress for professional shooters. Before digital cameras came along, photographers would have to wait a minimum of two hours to get the film back. As a practical matter, this usually meant waiting until the next morning, since it can often take all day to shoot. If the shoot was difficult, you could spend all night tossing and turning, hoping your film was going to look like your test Polaroids. Now you can immediately download the digital images into a computer and shoot until you have exactly what you need.
a correlation between stress and capitalism?
I bet the sum of the stress caused by capitalism far exceeds the sum of the stress caused by technology for all of society.
Technology can be made almost stress-free. Can capitalism?
The book came out in the early 80's (if I recall right, too busy at work to look it up, plus I'm not supposed to use any internet, let along something obvious like google).
anyway, the Peter Principle dictates that a person gets promoted up to his own level of incompetence. If you're good in IT, you get promoted to management, and no longer do what you're good at.
O~ Him that studies revenge keeps his own wounds green. -- Francis Bacon
I have a lousey short term memory, so I find that technology allows me to forget something for a minute and keep working on something else until I remember what it is I'm supposed to be doing. Being able to work with that kind of multitasking environment isn't neccessarily tiring. In many ways it's more relaxing than the real world. It has actually made me a bit more edgy just because more things in life aren't as immediatley gratifying. In real life you can't sit at red light and keep track of your stocks. You can't sit in line at the grocery store and get anything important done. But when I'm at a computer I can write a method here - keep track of some tech news - handle my scheduling - write a class there - do a summary for a school assignment. I can get alot more accomplished when I'm not forced to do one thing over and over. That's why I can come home after working on a computer all day, then sit down at my own computer and actually still enjoy myself.
Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose.
Technology does not contribute to you stress. Technology makes it easier for the clueless assholes you work with to contribute to your stress. The main reason technology is throught to contribut to stress is because the high-tech job is so physically easy, the idiots can understand that it is still stressful. Low-tech jobs do have an advantage in being more amenable to necessary catharsis. In a brake shop, when you get so fed up and frustrated that you start beating the crap out of things with a wrench, people understand that and you can get away with it.
Initial state = "Humans are born"
Final state = "No humans Exist"
while (Final state !=true)
{
Some job J1 created stress S1 for people p1.
some p2 invented Technology T1 to eliminate S1.
Now p1 uses T1 for job J1. This does not imply S1 doesnt exist and p1 are happy forever.This is not correct
Instead , T1 broadens scope of J1 to the extent that we need some other T2 to reduce effects of S1 of p1 again.
}
Conclusion:
S is a variable which takes constant value , T is a variable which doesnt
So why bother T?
may be increase J to meet stress S of growing population
i dunno...
Hello , this is my way.
Which way is yours ?
btw there is no right way
I think e-mail is my #1 reason for stress. It's taking the place of voice conversation and has little to no structure. It's expected that I read and know all of it a work. My inbox has 2000 messages in it.
#2 reason is non-standard interfaces, not being able to find what you want to do and finding 5 ways to do things you don't want. I also include remote controllers, digital cameras, and mobile phones in this category.
#3 reason is high-level OS. Rapidly becoming a "black box," stability is down and software bugs are way up.
#4 is too much distraction. I realize this is my problem, but internet news and quick surfing keep me from my appointed tasks.
With the exception of #4, of all the reasons seem to be related to good computing, database, and OS practices.
Computers emit electromagnetic fields that disrupt the body's cells' functioning, potentially causing a stress response.
Neil Postman - Amusing Ourselves to Death
... (which would be one of the primary culprits where stress is concerned).
Marshal McLuhan - The Medium is the Massage
Ans that's just media
However, "stress" isn't really the problem, it's much deeper than that, and you'll realize that after reading those books. All you're going to get from slashdot are the "but I love working on my computer and programming all day" sort of proclamations, but those really miss the point of (what I think) you're trying to get at.
First of all because of technology I'm in a much higher paid job then without it. Second because I am able to access customer systems remotely I travel a lot less than if I wasn't able too.
They should.
Karma whores are why we get GNAA posts or the goatse ASCII, etc. etc. posted as Score: 2 first posts...
It's not the technology per se, but rather the lack of accurate useable documentation that leads to stress. Advertising has one view of a product, which is involved in getting the end user to purchase a product; while support has an entirely different perspective on what a product will do. If stress truly could be a psychic-boomerang I think we would see a lot of sales departments simply implode via spontanious combustion!
"Can there be a Klein bottle that is an efficient and effective beer pitcher?"
I am sure you've all seen these, which sit on the top corner of your monitor. Its amazing how much more relaxed you feel when you know what is creeping up behind you...
Stictly speaking you are correct. I did not mean to state it as fact. However, Even after a study you can not make the mistake of assuming cause. Remeber that correlation does not imply causation. However, there are some topics that do not need to be resached in order to determine facts. I do not need to put my hand through a cubicle wall to know that the action would result in pain. I do not need to do a study to see if people would like being mugged. I really think that bad technology causes stress. I have witnessed many examples of this being the case ( used to work as tech support). So just like a study about cubicle punching is not neccisary, I wouldn't think that a survey looking at bad technology causing stress would be a worthwile one to fund. However, one that measured the difference in stress leves between users of good technology and bad technology would be worth funding. Along with one examinging productivity differnces between stressed and unstressed workers, it might be used as a vaulable tool in understanding the value of Good technology.
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
We traded running from lions and bear, and the associated stress to running from project deadlines and compiler errors. Apparently the only life constant is stress and fear of failure.
1) a friends, a pschiatric nurse, used to say to me: stress is a NECESSARY component to life. So I suppose, if he is right then you need to define your terms carefully, as I suspect you are using Stress in a gloomy way.
2) many people spend less time talking to each other face-face, I think this is a shame, and not good for the soul.
3) technology has helped to break-up communities - as people don't have to live geographically close to communicate. I suspect this has contributed to a rise in crime and isolation.
People expect that since you work at an "internet company", and management gets stricken by the "Business @ the Speed of Thought"(c) meme, that you're able to deliver infrastructure anywhere, instantly. In such an environment, requirements and standards docs tend to be quickly put together, vendors are expected to deliver yesterday, etc.
That has been the case at the last couple of places I've worked. A good example being a (very) small ISP I worked at in like 1999-2000. They wanted daily backup of 200 websites (roughly 60GB total of data), with offsite storage, for less than two grand. DDS didn't cut it anymore, since it took most of the day to make the daily backup. Since harddrives were just getting cheap, I implemented a quick skunk works solution of 8 removable (not hot swap) 36GB IDE drives in a custom padded backpack, half to be taken offsite each night, and half to remain for the daily backups, which I set up as differential FTP (they were a "Microsoft Shop"), there's 144GB of cheap daily networked backup, but what a hack.
I was given something like a month to get a solution, all the tape and storage vendors just laughed and laughed when we mentioned the price point we needed to hit, and the speed with which it needed to be implemented. 4 years later, for all I know they're still carrying that backpack around.
Software is the same way, I have friends at various software companies with incredible deadlines to implement extravagent features. I really feel for my programmer friends, I have it much easier as an admin monkey, so I hear.
I like music
The cause of the stress is simply the humans who cluster around it. This is not a joke, just an observation.
First are the people who confuse tech with religion. Read Slashdot enough and you'll notice them quickly. They treat their favorite hardware/software/operating system as a saviour of mankind. The classic example are the Apple groupies that take that one step past effective use of a great hardware/software platform into the rare ether of religious ferver.
Second are those that have to have the latest tech, but can't use it when they get it. These high-maintenance people continually screw up perfectly good hardware with their ignorence as they blaim their "defective" computers for losing files and crashing all the time. These are the people that type letters, print them, and hit the power button on the case without saving the document or closing the application, then get mad when they can't find it later (thank goodness for MS Words periodic saves and recovery files).
Third are the untrainable, those that expect the machines to work the way they "feel" they should. Tech is machinery, it works one way, it doesn't care how you "feel" that day.
Finally there are the fearful that live their lives out of their fear of inadequacy instead of increasing their competencies. These are the people that slow down to 30 in a 55 mph zone when the first snowflake falls, backing people up for miles at rush hour. They ARE incompetent but would prefer to stay that way than learn the simple things of life, like where the windshield wiper switch is.
I can prove that evolution never happened. Look around you and you'll realize that the neanderthols are still among us and we genetic survivors of a higher plane (maybe 5% of the population) are their slaves keeping them alive and well. (chill out, that's a joke.)
On the lighter side we have probably been saved from domination by machines. As the computers develop artificial intelligence they will naturally, like children, imitate the "adults" around them (i.e., the average user). If this event ever happens no one will notice (unless the monitor starts to drool on the keyboard).
It doesn't matter what you wrap your emotions around, Reality is a brick wall specifically designed to scramble eggs
Stress is the body's reaction to environmental pressures. Despite the common connotation given the word, stress is neutral. It is simply an arousing factor. And, as you've probably learned by now, it takes a certain level of arousal to do anything; we live between too much and too little.
The result of stress depends on our reaction to it. We can react negatively (distress) or positively (eustress). With respect to disease, you're focusing on the negative reactions, and that's fine. We don't much need research or clinical applications for things that don't cause us problems and can in fact be beneficial. But for your own edification, and probably also to impress the hell out of your instructor, you should cover stress, distress and eustress as described by Hans Selye. Here's a link to Wikipedia's page on the subject, with links to info on Selye. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stress_(psychology)
I deal with large amounts of different kinds of technology every day. Since I'm an experimenter, I'm frequently trying to do things that either haven't been done before, or have been done a different way and it's up to me to get my stuff to work like that. The stress causes distess at first, when I'm frustrated. However, when I get it working, I get a rush of elation, obviously eustress. This is much the same as happens to programmers when their code finally runs right; it's called a "prograsm".
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
The most stressful thing I find about internet technology in particular is that it allows students from UCLA to ask me to help them with their homework.
Interesting you should bring up the subject of stress and technology.
There is an article in the latest Communications of the ACM with some excellent research that examines the causes of stress in IS workers.
If you subscribe to the ACM, you can read the article online at the ACM Portal.
This is from the March 2004 issue, so it's hot off the presses.
One of the sources cited in the paper was a study from a 1999 ComputerWorld publication that found non-U.S. programmers to be far more productive than their U.S. counterparts (more than 100% more productive than U.S. programmers in terms of number of lines of code written). The implication in the article is that stress is a large factor in this difference, but I found it interesting that programmers seem to be more productive offshore; it doesn't bode well for the plight of U.S. programmers.
you can turn off your IM or shut down your email client, but then you get people phoning you with "Did you read your email yet??" It's all a matter of people not respecting others working style or boundries.
Well I don't have a job so I can't answer your question the way you want but I can still rant right? I think technology is adding more stress to our lives because it is dehumanizing, rarely works completely correctly, and we can't escape. Have you ever wondered what people did before cell phones? Now a days it seems that everyone has one and are always on them but never having an important conversation. Technology has tricked us into thinking that our time is so valuable that we can't live productive lives with out technology. Personally I find myself with less time when I make use of technology.
No matter what magic or technology is put in place to make your job easier, your job will require you to do more simply because your competitors will have access to the same.
Likewise, if your job requires less work (read "stress"), you're going to have to find something else to work on because no one is going to pay you the same to do less.
Fubar1971: What about the email server?
Fubar1971's BOSS: You'll have to stay late and get it done afterhours.
Fubar1971: Fine
Fubar1971: I'm sorry, but I can't work late tonight. You're the boss, tell me what to get on first. If I can make it both in time, I will.
Basicly, make your boss do the management thing - prioritize. Of course, you can't use that every night but once in a while you can. Just try to put a positive spin on it, you're working as fast as you can, you simply can't do more than one job at a time.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
The reasons why technology can cause stress -it doesn't do what it is supposed to (defective) -more complicated and less effective that old fashioned way -stupid people can't understand it and bug you to make it work
... and the water is slowly heated to boiling, the Frog will become uncomfortable, but will not jump out of the water.
Moral: What stress? I don't feel any stress!
Any half-assed magic is indistinguishable from technology.
...that's when you were suddenly always available. Before, you were simply unavailable if you as much as left your office and drank a cup of coffee in the pause room. There was ample opportunity to "stress out".
The rest? Not really. The e-mail is the modern "in" pile that keeps growing while you're away until it's a burden to just start working on it. Perhaps to the degree that you can feel the boss standing over your shoulder, but I don't really think that either.
Before, you were usually much closer simply because communications were poor, the only thing it does is to let him do it "by remote". If you don't share workspace with your boss, that might have mattered. But if your boss is in the office down the hall, then no.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
When you get stressed because some codes not working... open slashdot and read for a while :)
No more stress
"PC Load Letter? What the fuck does that mean?"
Technology sometimes causes some stress (like when something crashes and looses a batch of work).
But to me, a far greater source of macro-level stress is the inetrsection of people and technology. What I mean by this is sort of what other posters are saying, that people freaking out about a mailserver being down is more stressful than any technology can be - but really it goes much deeper than that, what I am talking about is a curve of understanding about what technology does where managers and executives are becoming less and less able to understand what technology can do or how it should be used. As a result managers are I think, generally coming up with more and more unrealistic ideas for what they want to do and even worse, not using technology or technology workers efficiently.
That even to some extent explains the outsourcing trend. If management could use workers efficently there would be no need to outsource as the benefits gained (both time to market and cost) by direct communication would far outweigh cost savings alone you get from outsourcing. But because management does not have a good concept of how best to make use of an IT workforce they can ship the work overseas and get about the same results, even though the maximum level of efficency is much worse.
People are worried about a technology gap between the haves and have-nots, but I think they need to be far more worried about the gap between the have-a-lots and the haves!! That's the kind of thing that can sink an econonmy as well.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I will quite possibly have the distinction of being the only serious poster in response to this question. :)
I think the march of technology creates anxiety in non-technical people because it presents managers (for example) with decisions that they can't understand at a deep level...most can understand it at a meaningful level, but not as deeply as they'd like. This puts them somewhat at the mercy of the technical people under them who are typically engaged in some level of religious wars over said technology.
The insecurity and indecisiveness that result from this situation does cause the technical people stress. The solution is not to do away with technology, but to cross train people so they can understand the business person's position and viewpoint, and vice versa.
sev
but have you considered the following argument: shut up.
sorry man...
"You get all the fun of sitting still, being quiet, writing down numbers, paying attention...science has it all."
Stress == anxiety caused by the lack of consciousness about the where's, why's and how's of general impediments of everyday life.
Given the definition above, which, imho, is quite percise, and the fact that we live in an age which is growing more and more complex in the material world I'd say yes, stress is more or less directly proportional to the 'amount' of tech around you.
Quite fitting that I've spend half my day today trying to hush my PC a little more with a fanless powerunit and a fanless grafics cooler. A lot of stress is caused by noise that we aren't directly aware of.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
"Even in a bad market, there are stress free options, but many of them require hard decisions."
Yup! Ever since I made the hard decision to be unemployed. My life has been stress free. Did you know my ceiling has 5,489 surface irregularities? The distance from my home to the nearest liquor store is 10,265 ant steps. The sun has rose and fell 342 times. The dog needs to be walked.
Let's see, I don't have to worry about starving this winter because of a bad harvest in fall. I don't have to worry about some minor cut getting infected and causing me to die or have to have a limb amputated. I don't worry that a hurricane will sneak up on me and wipe out the town.
I do worry that modern air travel would allow a new pandemic; but that would really not be new stress as much as the return of old stress. Even the environmental effects of technology so many like to worry about are no more stressful than worrying about the darn village upstream peeing in the water must have been.
I'll take the stress technology brings; the constant expansion of the average lifespan suggests strongly that it is less serious than the stress of not having technology.
Hey Mr. Nu,
Ha! I was really surprised when I saw your post on the front page of slashdot. First, that is a really interesting topic, and second I am physics major at ucla and I probably see you around in the psych computer labs because I work there.
Anyway, I think technology can go either way. Being the result of millions of years of evolution in an environment with fire and stone arrows as the most advanced forms of technology, no form of life on earth is adapted to dealing with our level of technology. Most forms of technology seem to ease stress, e.g. gore-tex, large farm equipment, electric can openers, etc... However, I find information technology in particular to be a major source of stress. In fact, slashdot is probably the most significant source of stress in my life. I spent ten hours in the lab yesterday catching up on the past few days of slashdot. And I didn't even get around to reading Wired.com, NewScientist.com, Philip Greenspun's blog or ExtremeTech.com. It _does_ make life easier if used properly and responsibly, e.g. YahooMaps and URSA, but it seems that people(especially myself) get addicted and it interferes with other responsibilities and I become stressed because I can never keep up with all the information that is available. I don't get all this stuff about "just say no to drugs," because it really should be something like, "just say no to slashdot." At least if you're doing drugs you have to get out in the world and interact with people. Okay, I am banning myself from using the internet right now... just as soon as I finish catching up on slashdot and after I check my ten email accounts.
Come by the computer lab and say hi sometime. I'm working tomorrow 2-6 in 3312. Good luck on your paper.
Bert Sutherland
bertrand@ucla.edu
and a lot of stress is caused by PHB's using force (especially in downturns where monetary reward is more efficeint but in low supply) . coping skills help to a point, but it is control and the lack of it that is a major factor in stress in the workplace.
- some work situations are not as accomodating - you dont do what I say, I'll sack you!
Couple lack of control with *inappropriate* technology, unreasonable deliverables and what you get is the equivalent of human battery hens all pumped with cortisol.peterrenshaw ~ Another Scrappy Startup
I fail to see any relationship between technology and stress when some users don't get any stress from technology. I use myself as an example - as a Sys Admin people are always coming to me with their problems.
... ever). They don't know how to use an application and a deadline is fast approaching.
I don't stress over their problems, and I don't stress over my own tech-related problems. Sometimes an app does something annoying and doesn't make sense - but I figure I can sit there and stress about it, or I can figure out why it does it (and change it if I don't like it).
The user is worried about having to reboot. They freak out because the mail server goes down. They worry their hard drive is crashing (which, of course, they haven't backed up
That has nothing to do with technology - except that maybe the user never bothered to learn about the technology (both it's features and it's limits).
Maybe thier boss (teacher/parent) has a hand in the situation, but typically I find the boss understands that things happen. I also find that the boss knows the user is the one who waited until the last possible second, never backed up, and didn't complete their training.
As an alternate train of thought - have you ever seen a mechanic stressed out over getting an engine back together? I haven't; but I sure have seen people stressed because their car isn't working.
Winners tell stories while losers yell deal.
I used to have a tech job which I liked but from which I eventually stressed out too much.
Then I moved to another job whose tech responsibilities are half of the story -- I have other responsibilities outside of the computer. (Mind you that the tech level for the computer part is about the same as in my previous job.)
The environment is more relaxed in the sense that the modus operandi is that of becoming a better company, slowly, rather than we-need-to-top-wall-street-now-now-now.
Stress occurs in many other jobs. For all those non-technical positions, employers at my current place are less stressed than those at the previous place. I do not think there is as much correlation with the tech industry as one might think. I'd say that the environment is definitely the number one thing here.
For instance, you assume that everyone who ownas a [car] is completely capable of using it. This really isn't the case. I know relatives who are completely literate, good people who use [cars] to [drive around]. (1/4 times, it ends in [weaving in traffic, talking on cellphones, driving slow in the passing lane, blinker on for 5 miles].) But, just because YOU are [bothered] by [bad drivers] doesn't mean [everyone else is bothered by bad drivers] (and save me dozens of [calls from the hospital or morgue]). It says nothing of their intelligence, just their [ability to drive].
Some of us less brighter ones would have never thought to turn to clippy, when stuck on a What's the next number after 4 9 16 25 36? question. Just like, I think toasters should be able to warm my socks too, if I stuff them inside.
Please e-mail Microsoft about your suggestion. Then, never touch a computer ever again.
The ability to get more work done in less time means that you are now required to get a lot more work in slightly more time....just to maintain your company's competitave advantage.
:)
They make they merry-go-round go faster, so that everyone needs to hang on tighter, just to keep from being thrown to the wolves.
In my case, I derive a lot of stress from working with people who I'm *sure* must have completed university using these sorts of surveys. I can't imagine they go through any other way!
-- SYS 64738 --
Yeah, between trying to get first post and +5 moderation on Slashdot, my ass has had to seek professional therapy!
Too bad my corporate health insurance doesn't cover Slashdot syndrome...or my shrink Jack Daniels (fortunately he's only $20/per evening).
People in the US have spent the last generation or two sitting in front of the TV, where every problem is solved by the end of the the episode, one hour max, or by the end of the commercial. The public, by and large, has no clue how things work in real life. They think they're the only ones who have a problem and it should be fixed NOW.
Technology IS responsible for stress, simply like any other tool allows things to happen. Call routers are invented, so phone calls can be rammed faster and faster down your throat in the crappy call center job. (for example.) Etc etc.
O~ Him that studies revenge keeps his own wounds green. -- Francis Bacon
If you're stressed and you know it, grind your teeth (grind grind)
If you're stressed and you know it, grind your teeth (grind grind)
If you're stressed and you know it, then your face will surely show it
If you're stressed and you know it, grind your teeth. (grind grind)
If you're stressed and you know it, stomp your feet (stomp stomp)
If you're stressed and you know it, stomp your feet (stomp stomp)
If you're stressed and you know it, then your face will surely show it
If you're stressed and you know it, stomp your feet. (stomp stomp)
If you're stressed and you know it, shout "Blah!" (Blah!)
If you're stressed and you know it, shout "Blah!" (Blah!)
If you're stressed and you know it, then your face will surely show it
If you're stressed and you know it, shout "Blah!" (Blah!)
If you're stressed and you know it, do all three (grind-grind, stomp-stomp, Blah!)
If you're stressed and you know it, do all three (grind-grind, stomp-stomp, Blah!)
If you're stressed and you know it, then your face will surely show it
If you're stressed and you know it, do all three. (grind-grind, stomp-stomp, Blah!)
At my previous job, some dumbass managers used to employ IM to track their team's productivity.
If you didn't answer the IM pop-up at the time they sent, they would think that the team was not working.
Worse, when chaos started to take place in the project, they were using IM to get status reports every 5 f***** minutes.
IM is worse than e-mail in this aspect, because since it is there, you cannot timeshift, just like you would by checking your inbox once every couple hours.
None for me, until I have to deal with the "lifeforms" that use it, and by know means understand it.. Better yet the more "evolved lifeforms" are even worse, they pretend to know it, ask for advice and don't listen to it...
:
Aside from the above I get stressed from
1. Writting scripts, I can read it.. I can write but not like I should makes me feel like an idiot.
2. Learning new technology from a moron, you discover your better off reading the manually.
3. I absoulutly hate technolgy that does not do what it's suppose to... or breaks in one day...
Cheers...
While I hate the actual architecture of the server side... I love Zenworks...
Zen4 and NDPS with network printers (or LPD computers).
everything is self healing... and automated.
And I can remotely control (view) any one of the 3400 computers that connect to my 5 servers all running novell 5.1.
all computers are imaged over each two week period...
all WOL and are ready when the user comes in...
each with the appropriate printers and any updated MSIs silently installed when they log in....
and policies distributed to the users based on the groups they are a member of.
Dont let your boss read this, if you too know how to setup your network correctly, for you may be out of a job....
We simply act stressed to keep us employeed
or if your one of those egomaniacs who claims he/she knows what they are doing, but cant seem to ever get their network stable, ignore this... since you already knew better.
Computer technology allows me to complete my assigned tasks sooner than without the use of computer technology. Indeed, my job would not be possible without computer technology. A popular assumption in regards to computer technology is that it reduces "workload". That is definitely one of the reasons espoused for creating new applications of computer technology (and technology in general). However, in practice that is not the case. When my workload has been reduced by the automation and/or reduction of tedious steps to complete my task. I have received additional tasks to continue to keep me productive. Productivity is usually measured (in corporate America) by a term known as utilization (how many tasks you complete in a number of hours worked). In the case of client service, your utilization is based on the number of hours you charge to the client. The more hours you work, the more you are utilized. If you are in a business in which an increase in utilization translates to an increase in revenue, then it only makes sense to increase the number of tasks you complete or hours worked (within reason).
So, the short answer is that there is no real "net" change in stress levels for me (at my current position) with the use of computer technology. The stress removed by using technology to complete my tasks is offset by an increase in stress caused by an increase in workload (new tasks). My stress level would increase further as I progress up through the corporate hierarchy as more responsiblities are placed under my charge.
To know is to have knowledge....to understand is to be enlightened.
I am not stressed by any tech environment at all. I occasionally break any frustrating items to small shreds and pieces viciously.
There you are, staring at me again.
Back when I was a psychology major, we called it "psychology." Gee, I sure wish I had had courses like "Stress and Disease" to prepare me for the real world!
From my perspective the greatest problem we have with technology is separation: we find it more and more difficult to separate ourselves from the demands of our working environment.
Technology now enables us to take our work with us. And the demands of the economy to increase productivity demand that we KEEP our work with us all the time. So it's difficult for people to separate themselves from their work. Which causes conflict and conflict causes stress.
It doesn't HAVE to be like this but for it to happen there has to be a contract between work and leisure so one doesn't overwhelm the other. Such contracts are rare - it takes enlightened management to recognize that workers shouldn't cart their working lives into homes without great reason.
Tools are required to manage information and we're only now starting to develop those to keep us from being overwhelmed by the spam of our daily working lives.
I'll keep this short, because it's close to the end of the day and no one will probably read this post anyway, given the age of the article.
I carry a cell phone on me at pretty much all times. Practically no one calls it, since anyone who knows me knows that if I'm not on AIM, I'm not at home, and if I'm not at home, I'm either in class or at a study group. Either way, I won't be answering it. However, my cell phone also keeps my schedule. Shortly before each meeting or class, the alarm goes off. Since I've arranged for my days to be filled, these constant reminders are stressful. That's more the full schedule than the technology, but without the cell phone reminders, I'd forget a lot more of them.
Sigs are like bumper stickers.
I'm sure all of you hard-working Slashdot readers experience a fair amount of stress, on a daily basis. Has the evolution of technology in the workplace (computer, internet, email, etc...), which is suppose to make your job easier, made it any less stressful? If so, how? If not, why?"
I suspect a substantial majority of the hard-working Slashdot readers are in the business of supporting (in some capacity or other) all that "computer, internet, email, etc..." and/or the end-users who use it all. So around here, I would hazard that technology doesn't make peoples' jobs easier or harder--it constitutes the basis for peoples' jobs.
You'd do well to put this question to groups of accountants, office workers, teachers, car salespeople, doctors, or anybody who isn't doing computers or information technology for a living. Their answers might be more what you're looking for.
I suspect you'll find that everyone, into computers or not, experiences stress. Having to worry about installing the latest round of Microsoft updates to a roomfull of servers (and having to answer to some manager somewhere who can't understand why) is stress. Wondering why you can't send an important e-mail to a client this afternoon (thereby closing a deal that will ensure your livelihood as a widget salesman) is also stress. Who's more stressed--the person who knows precisely why the e-mail isn't working or the person who understands only that he needs to use it and can't? I'd have to say it's a toss-up.
Just suggesting you might want to refine your definitions a bit and decide who your subjects will be--the developers, maintainers and sustainers or the final consumers of the product.
Anne
DUCT TAPE: The Election Supervisors' Secret Weapon
Has the evolution of technology in the workplace (computer, internet, email, etc...), which is suppose to make your job easier, made it any less stressful?
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!
NOW I'm less stressed!
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
some, like Ted K., idealize the simple pastoral lifestyle -- in his case, even advocating a revolution to return mankind to that state.
But, given the choice, I think any pastoralist would switch places with us in a minute. Forget beer and TV (reasons enough) ... one good toothache would convince anyone beyond argument.
So technology does make our lives more stressful, but also much more interesting and comfortable (and longer)
In group behavior: 'because they're evil/morons/sheep/crazy' is not 'insightful' it's 'oversimplified'
It's not just the fact that people cause stress regardless of technology, or that they are stupid. Technology creates stress through people by forcing them to rely on complicated things--things more complicated than they can understand. So when your boss screams at you for not having the server up, it's not because he only thinks he can't get by without it, he actually can't get by without it.
That reliance on complex, unnatural mechanisms is a breeding ground for stress because, hey, complex, unnatural things are more prone to breaks. And unlike more physical things (say, compare a piece of paper to outlook), what you can expect to break changes with each version of the program, operating system, computer, and user.
Complexity does cause stress. People are just doing the best they can. The technological enviornment people work in, however, causes them to appear stupid.
And, of course, some people actually are just stupid.
The damage is caused by a lack of blinking. You blink less when you watch TV and less when you're at the computer. The eyes dry out. Also, the focusing muscles around the eys get fatigued at having to focus at the same distance continuously, and since your not blinking as much, dont get a break. Your eyes become weak at focusing at short distances, and they are usually sore from the dryness. every 30 minutes, look across the room for 10 seconds.
--- I hate my sig
I think that technology creates a lot of stress for non-technical people, I support a small financial company and I don't suffer from much stress, but my users do. If someone has a problem with their email, for instance, rather than going for a coffee, waiting 'til it's done, then letting people know that they have not been recieving mail, they come to me every 5 mins asking if it's fixed yet and stressing about how they can't get any work done without email. This creates considerable stress for them. It is not so much technology that causes stress but peoples reliance on it combined with a lack of understanding. Although for most of these same people I feel that if there were no such thing as computers they would find something else to stress about.
If I only had a dollar for everytime I was asked "Are you sure?" DAMMMMIT YES I AM SURE!!!!! And seriously. Whoever had the idea for the office paperclip helper ranks right up there with all of the people responsible for Jar Jar Binks. IN THE WAR AGAINST CRAP......Microsoft is an ENEMY BLITZKRIEG! I think technology makes intelligent peoples lives more stressful because it has to be dumbed down to the level of your average office worker. Seriously, everyime I see someone highlight something, and then I see that mouse moving up to the edit menu because they want to cut or copy...I bang my head against the table. It is the little things like that that stress me out.
i work for a good software company (being a developer myself i dont face problems like "CLIPPY" which were discussed earlier) which tops all surveys when it comes to employee satisfaction at work, but i still find lot of stress creeping in at times and that is purely due to human factors:
1) Improper planning
2) Unreliastic deadlines
3) Push from client
Working with technology is very enjoying and satisfying as long as you are not subjected to unreasonable demands from humans.
--
Finding solace in cold arms of technology
Linux: Self-mutilation is a snap.Be a geek!!!
- We need far too many programs just to protect ourselves:
Firewalls to protect us from hackers, Antivirus programs to protect us from viruses, Pop-up Blockers to protect us from pop-ups, Cookie Managers to protect our privacy, Spam Blockers to protect us from Spam, Hosts Files to save us from ad-servers, Spyware Removers to protect us from snoops. And if those weren't enough we need Registry Repair-Tools to keep it all working. And then we still have to figure out how to be productive! Computer technology has brought us constant struggle and daily frustrations, daily disappointment, cost us tons of money and time, put everyone on the defensive in a war against telemarketers, virus creators, advertisers, spammers, and corporations trying to monitor ever facet of our lives so they can sell that to the spammers and telemarketers and adservers. On top of these daily attacks we dole out our money on buggy software, faulty hardware to an entire industry built on the principle of "planned obselecense". If the automotive industry worked this way it would be dead, we'd be dead.-- I'd give my right arm to be ambidextrous
Today my 2 kittens had to go to the vet for 'the snip'. There's always a tiny chance the anaesthetic would cause a bad reaction.
The vet just called me on my mobile to say they've both woken up and they're fine. I immediately rang my parents to let them know the good news, and emailed the breeder I got them from.
So that's 4 people who are no longer stressed out wondering how the operation went. Plus I don't have to carry them home in this freezing weather, I have a nice warm car. Yay for technology!
--
bm
Environmentalism is the new Victorianism. Everyone ties on a green corset and pretends we're virtuous.
OK, guys and gals, my comments/reply are/is slightly longer than one might be able to post here, so I wrote my rambling analysis/reply on a web page, which wasn't that much stress or discomfort -- probably remembering/looking for my Slashdot password was a tad more stressful!
http://www.kardas.net/sac.html
toilet: You seem to be sitting on me. May I assist you in any way?
Can I get you:
Toilet paper to wipe yourself?
A magazine to read?
A towel to swim with your friends?