Even Geeks Need a Breather

Another interesting article from Regina Lynn in Wired Magazine touching on the social impact of all of this communication technology.

She says:

All week, I’ve been burned out on technology. I haven’t wanted to read e-mail, much less answer it. I haven’t felt like logging into IM, despite the clients and friends who expect me to be there. I haven’t even wanted to pick up my phone.

In my job, I can’t boycott technology for a day, much less a week. I’ve been forcing myself to bang out e-mails and make the necessary phone calls.

But when I’m done working for the day, I’ve been flopping on my bed with a novel in hand and the phone turned off. No social e-mail or chatting — there’s not a keyboard in sight.

I even wrote this column the old-fashioned way, with pen and paper.

I’m sure this is familiar to you. If you’re reading Wired News, it stands to reason that you spend a lot of time at the computer. All geeks burn out on tech once in a while, and even gamers need the occasional break from the controls. (Really.)

But how many couples confuse technology burnout with relationship burnout? You start projecting the anti-IM sentiment onto the person on the other end of the dialog. Or you resent the friend calling you when you suddenly can’t stand the sound of the polyphonic ring tone you paid $2 for.

She then goes on to explain how her relationship is so intertwined with the communication technology available to her that when the technology becomes a barrier it significantly impacts her relationships.

We have made huge and significant changes in the technology that is available to us, this has allowed us to make significant changes to the way that we interact with each other, but we have only limited understanding of what this is doing to us.

I recently read an article in the Harvard Magazine about how we were all getting less sleep. The article talks about the impact to our sleep of the electric light bulb and the change that having always-on light available has made. this is being further compounded by the availability of always on communication.

There has been other studies which concluded that our IQ was impacted by communication technology.

We really need to get studying the social impact of all of this communication if we don’t we are in danger of becoming the next big scare. By this I mean that communication technology is in danger of becoming the next thing that people start to regard as too dangerous to use. This will not necessarily be because it is too dangerous to use, but because we can’t communicate the dangers and the safe practices. Once these worries are embedded within a culture they are incredibly difficult to remove. In the UK a worry about the use the MMR (Measles, Mumps and Rubella) vaccine has become lodged within the consciousness of many people. Millions of pounds have been spent on advertising and studies to prove that it’s safe; but the worry won’t go away. Even though these three deceases are terrible, people still delay having their child inoculated because of worries. The key issue with these worries has been ‘control’, there is an alternative, but because the government told them they couldn’t use the alternative they felt that they didn’t have control and the worries just increased. Communication technology is in danger of suffering from similar worries because people increasingly feel like they are not in control. We all know that they are, but do they feel it. Do they feel empowered to turn the mobile phone off, do they feel empowered to turn the email off. The feeling of control is constantly being diminished and at some point there will be a rebellion, unless we can make sure the everyone understands that they are in control and that they aren’t permanently plugged in.

(I must find a better word than communication – because none of this technology actually enables communication, it enables the transferal of information that may result in communication. Communication requires somebody to the thing that is being transmitted to them AND to comprehend it. Just receiving the transmission isn’t enough.)