Time rage comes from an insidious mix of ego (my desires and my needs) and the demands of time (I have to get an answer immediately or I need to get this piece of information ASAP). Just as it is on our roads with car rage and even cyclist rage — get in my way and you will pay!
Instant communication can have its real pluses: knowing where our partners, friends and children are can be very reassuring. But wanting to know where they are all the time may just be fuelling, rather than dampening, our anxieties. Did Marco Polo's mum fret because he didn't text every day?
Instant communication can have its real pluses: knowing where our partners, friends and children are can be very reassuring. But wanting to know where they are all the time may just be fuelling, rather than dampening, our anxieties. Did Marco Polo's mum fret because he didn't text every day?
It's the first day of the new year and the new decade. (Is it the tensies? the teenies? the onesies?...there needs to be a UN think tank working on the label we will give this awkward period between the noughties and the twenties.)
The noughties are a decade synonymous with an explosion in personal connectivity. Mobile smart phones, wireless connection, Twitter, Facebook, My Space, messaging, personal GPS...the ways to keep track of ourselves and our colleagues, family and friends are endless.
Perhaps this new decade is a time to re-evaluate our obsession with this connectivity?
Rob Moodie's column in The Age this morning struck a chord with me. Go read the entire piece. I particularly liked the line about Marco Polo's mum.
Before our time, the ways of communicating with people not within our immediate vicinity were, if not limited, infinitely slower than they are today.
Handwritten letters took the slow boat to China. Costly long distance phone calls were booked in advance and connected via an operator. Copies of photos taken at family events were made by leaving the negatives at the local pharmacy and prints were collected days later and mailed to the intended recipients.
Nowadays, an email can be received and replied to on a mobile phone that is in a beach bag, while you sit on the sand. Phone calls can be made across the world and timezones at low cost via Skype or VOIP. Photos can be uploaded and emailed around the world practically while the event is still continuing. Family across the country can have a pic of junior blowing out the candles saved as a desktop background before the smoke has actually cleared.
But does all this connectivity make life simpler?
The times I log into Facebook, my head spins with the activities of all my 'friends'. I feel guilty if I haven't replied to message or a missed call on my mobile phone within a short time. My inbox overflows with emails I have flagged to respond to, or that contain something I have to add to my 'to-do' list.
As Rob Moodie says, "We are tyrannised by the to-do list, and also by the to-worry-about list and the to-feel-guilty-about list. As our inboxes overload and our lists expand, we get more irritable and more anxious".
And the most insidious aspect of all this connectivity is that it has blurred the distinction between leisure and work time. Never again will corporate workers be able to 'leave work' at the end of the day.
All of which means that home and family life is never 100 per cent the focus of most corporate workers. One ear or one eye is always on the Blackberry or the iPhone or the computer screen, even if only to skim over the cause of the latest ping and decide that it is not in fact urgent and can wait for a response until the following day, or after the holidays.
In order to slow our lives down and mentally de-clutter, we need to chose to physically turn off these devices; to adjust our expectations of others' response times; and to enjoy our experience of the present without being tuned in to a reality that exists elsewhere, whether it be the workplace or another geographic location.
But is that even possible? Or desirable? Tell us what you think.
Oh, and we wish you a happy, but slow, New Year!
*Professor Rob Moodie is chairman of global health at the University of Melbourne's Nossal Institute.
4 comments:
Happy New Year you two!
Here's to more hand-written letters and notes and good stationery.
When Vodafone gave me a new $600 hi-tech phone that came with a DVD of instructions, I decided to stick with my little $47 Nokia that sends and receives texts, stores numbers and does phone calls.
Life really doesn't need to be so complicated. Your Age man is dead right.
Hurrah to Rob Moodie of "The Age"
Agree with him 100%!
Like Leslie I'll stick to the old Nokia (which incidentally was the only one of our two mobiles to work whilst on holiday in Scotland.)
The anticipation of waiting for a hand-written letter must be worth a lot more than an instant message.
Hope 2010 goes slower than 2009!
Happy New Year to all.
I'm calling the first half of this decade the Tweens.
Having rejoiced in having the simplest possible phone for years I am a complete convert to one of the biggest symbols of the iDecade - the iPhone. It doesn't come with instructions because it doesn't need any.
But still - I love a handwritten letter, hate Christmas cards that are just To X from Y and wish most of my children's friends DIDNT get iPod touches for Christmas.
Ok, Happy New Year from me too - 2 years later, but still stands :)
I still write letters and send them snail mail, a hobby I have cherished since I was 9 years old.
Social Media plays a very small part in my life, I gave Fb a go and got bored very quickly with all these mindless updates, so now I just use it as a newsfeed only.
I have only just discovered your blog and happy to say I have been reading for over an hour, longest ever for a blog to keep me interested, good stuff! Pity is stopped somewhere.
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