I was greeted with this little gem tonight and couldn’t resist the urge to fire up Paint and make my mark… it reminded me of an article that was posted on the New York Times recently titled, Digital Devices Deprive Brain of Needed Downtime. As of late I would say that I agree with the Matt and the researchers at University of Michigan. I generally try to make sure I balance my life with work and play, with physical activities such as working out or playing ice hockey and with spending time with the family and my growing daughters. I’ve thankfully avoided the crack-berry syndrome and I have intentionally not configured my Droid to use ActiveSync with my work Exchange Server, just using POP3 to get my personal email thank you. There’s no technology pervasiveness around us, just look around yourself. It’s in your home, in your car, at your place of work, and you probably carry a fair bit of it around with you daily.
I’m curious how other IT professionals feel about the subject? Is it just fodder or do you feel it’s visibly impacting your life?
Personally I feel it’s just like anything else in life, too much of a good thing ain’t a good thing.
Cheers!
Updated: September 2, 2010
Just cleaning up my poor grammar and run on sentences.
I think technology is impacting my life, but I am not really noticing it on a daily basis. I’ve grown up with this and see it as the norm. I realized this when I went up to Northern Maine this past June. The cell reception isn’t the best, so I did not have access to email and the web as often as I normally do. Believe it or not, I felt free and really relaxed. This gave me time to be aware of my surroundings and appreciate the simple things such as meeting new people and TALKING with them. I also realized that I do not need to be doing something constantly to be productive. I guess technology and the cell phone fills this void. It makes you think you are being productive, but you’re really burning yourself out.
I try and keep a balance too – I’m trying to get back into photography and hiking. Working with computers and networks all day, I go home NOT wanting to hop on the computer except to pay bills.
I do have work’s email pushed to my iPhone, but it helps when I am on call. It saves me a ton of time. However, I find myself checking email more and more.
Other than that, I love technology. Streaming Pandora and podcasts to the car stereo on my daily commute makes it a lot more tolerable.
Thanks for taking the time to reply Gabe.
I’ll freely admit that I really enjoy technology too.
Cheers!
My BlackBerry has Twitter, Gmail, Gtalk, Skype, BlackBerry Messenger, SMS, and corporate mail…and some sort of “voice” function reportedly, where you can talk in real-time to another person after punching a series of numbers (never use that part). I have 2 docking stations, one at home and at work, for my laptop. On the laptop, I’m usually connected to Twitter, Skype, Gmail, corp mail, etc. My home entertainment system has a Blu-ray player that plugs me into Netflix, Pandora, Picasa, and more, even playing these shiny round disc things. I have a 2x2TB NAS array in my own rack at home, attached to the gigabit network running over the hardwire I ran and terminated myself. My car has GPS navigation, Bluetooth, XM, AM, FM, seat heaters, a 6 disc CD changer, voice recognition, and 8 million buttons littering the interior, exactly all of which are understood and used by me, and exactly 3 of which have burnt out backlights. I hop on a Skype conference call weekly with friends across the ocean, where we digitally record our mostly aimless thoughts, and then notify the world via iTunes that the latest podcast is ready. I have a GPS-enabled watch with heart-rate monitor that I wear while running. It records all my data while I run, and then I can do a data analysis after a USB upload. My run will even be plotted in Google Earth if I want. I have another watch with an altimeter, barometer, and compass that I use while hiking in the mountains; it’s at the back of the class in that I can’t offload the data points after a backwoods adventure, but at the front with its solar rechargeable 20 year battery. I have an iPod that has a high-quality copy of every CD on my shelf, as well as several LPs I’ve digitized, plus podcast content that updates regularly.
When is it enough? I seriously have no idea.
Some days I fantasize about a life as a subsistence farmer. People lived 25, 50, and 100 years ago happy, socialable, and functional without all of these gadgets. Couldn’t we? It’s appalling how much time I spend fiddling with e-toys, keeping batteries in them, fixing them when they break, and figuring out how to make them do the things they reportedly do.
Hi Ethan,
You’re certainly in the thick of it aren’t you… I almost feel the (competitive) urge to reply with my own list but I’ll refrain if for no other reason than my wife might get a hold of it and then I’ll really be in trouble.
I guess in the end if the gadget, tool, or toy makes us happy or makes our lives better then it’s worth having it around.
Thanks for the comment!