We have become too "plugged in."

[UncleJoseph]

I've been thinking about the "blessing vs. curse" concept of our modern technology, especially as it relates to the workplace. In my own work setting, we have become VERY dependent upon new technology. Our employees are expected to do more and more work since technology supposedly increases productivity. However, due to our new-found dependence, we suffer massive productivity problems when our tech malfunctions. I don't want to to go into too much detail, but our technology has replaced the old way of doing things so much that we cannot do things the old way anymore. New employees don't even have a clue how to do things the old way. IF the tech doesn't work, the job simply cannot get done in many cases.

Now, we get new technology all the time. In my particular field, the tech we depend on is targeted toward our very narrow and specific market. We often end up being the one of the first agencies to implement a new piece of tech, and therefore end up being the beta testers. Much of this new tech is not mature or ready for market. So we suffer massive productivity problems and delays. Yet, the bosses who decide to implement this tech are from the old school, and often don't understand why productivity drops sharply because of these implementation issues.

Further, we are so plugged in to our tech, that we cannot unplug at the end of the work day. It's becoming more and more expected (although not officially "required") that you will reply to cell phone calls, text messages, and emails in your off-work hours. I read some research that suggests anxiety, stress disorders and other problems like attention deficit disorders are sharply on the rise due to our inability to "unplug." Few people seem to realize the negative impacts this constant communication and digital connection seem to have on us all.

Often, when dining out, I'll see a couple or family eating at a table near mine. All of them will have their heads buried in a smartphone for much of the meal. At first I thought, "Families are degrading due to our constant distractions. Families don't talk to each other anymore!" In an unrelated discussion, my wife once commented how she wanted our schedules to be more in-line so we could come home from work, talk about our day at work, have dinner and go to sleep together...the ideal family home life. I later realized that, even on the days when we have the opportunity to do this, we rarely have anything to talk about. We text constantly through the day (something that annoys the shit out of me, but has become part of all of our lives, it seems), and there is little left to talk about when we get home. I realized that families seem to be replacing their face-to-face interactions when they get home from work/school with their one-line digital communications during the day. But there is much that is lost in this method of communication.

I hate text messaging. My phone gets a text message from work, friends, family, telemarketers, banks, etc. about once an hour if I'm not actively engaged in a text-conversation. I can never unplug. Conventional wisdom seems to believe that texting is a less-intrusive method of communication. People have said, "Well, I didn't want to call you...you might have been busy, so I just sent you a quick text." Because of this, texting is rampant, and thus, much more intrusive than a phone call. Because it is so rampant, you cannot escape. I have found that replying to text messages have become far more obligatory than answering a call. People get upset if you don't reply to text messages because "It's easy to send a quick reply, and doesn't interrupt what you're doing as much as a phone call." This line of reasoning is exactly why texting is so much more of a hassle. People don't think twice about sending multiple texts all the time, despite having reservations about making an actual phone call. This "non-intrusive" attitude about texting also means replying to them is much more obligatory. For those of you who attend workplace meetings, how often do you see the attendees answering text messages, playing games, or otherwise distracted by their smartphones, doing anything but paying attention to the meeting? How do we get anything done anymore?

Add all those things together, and you have a race of beings that have a hard time disconnecting from work, don't communicate nearly as much face-to-face as they used to, and assign way to much meaning to mindless, time-wasting distractions such as Facebook games, Twitter and other social media (at least on discussion forums, you can attempt to have a decent debate or conversation).

So what is the price of all this? I don't know the extent...I'm sure there are people with more of an answer than I have. But I do believe personal relationships are suffering, The quality of work we do is being forgotten in favor of quantity, and we are losing our ability to be truly human beings living human lives. We're becoming a race of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder-laden beings who experience life in short bursts of intense stimulation, but those bursts of stimulation are devoid of much meaning or fulfillment. We are withdrawing from that which makes us human. Coming from a guy who spend much of his professional and personal time online and "plugged in," the irony is too much! We spend so much time devoted to the immediate nature of our communications and instant results produced by our tech that our professional and personal lives are no longer all that productive.

How much more productive could you be at work if you didn't have a new text message, email or tech-related interruption every few minutes? How much better would the quality of your work be without those distractions? In your home life, how much more relaxed could you be without those constant interruptions? How much better would your relationships be if you shared a meal with your family to talk about your lives, instead of having the Twitter/Text-summarized version of their lives? How much better would your home life be if work didn't bother you every few hours with text messages or emails that can wait until you get back to work, but for some reason are expected to be answered immediately?

For anyone who think what I just wrote is completely incomprehensible and falls into the TLDR category, I'll try to pare it down to a 140-character essay...

[sinsual]

It is interesting to note. MOST of the major Time Management courses and seminars make one thing clear.

"Social Technology has made work take longer"

Social Technology feeds on the myth of "Multitasking".

My department has been doing a lot of time management seminars and courses. Employing much of the tools used to lessen the impact of Social Technology.

I know personally, over the last 6 months, making major changes on how much I use social technology, I am more relaxed. My job moves smoother. I get more done at work. My productivity is more consistent. Projects are done on time more often when dealing with other people in my department, yet, when having to deal with other departments, (especially Underwriting) Social Tech heavy departments never have things done on time. Drive me nuts with 20 emails when a 5 minute phone call could solve the problem.

Text outside of work is limited to short questions. Anything more than "what time are we meeting?" "What is the address?" is handled by a phone call.

The only exception to the text rules are for those of my close friends who are outside of AZ. Even family is handled with phone calls rather than text.

OR, when Cell signal strength is limited. Then text is the only way to communicate. Which sadly happens often here.

[Raygun]

I hate text messaging. My phone gets a text message from work, friends, family, telemarketers, banks, etc. about once an hour if I'm not actively engaged in a text-conversation. I can never unplug. Conventional wisdom seems to believe that texting is a less-intrusive method of communication. People have said, "Well, I didn't want to call you...you might have been busy, so I just sent you a quick text." Because of this, texting is rampant, and thus, much more intrusive than a phone call. Because it is so rampant, you cannot escape. I have found that replying to text messages have become far more obligatory than answering a call. People get upset if you don't reply to text messages because "It's easy to send a quick reply, and doesn't interrupt what you're doing as much as a phone call." This line of reasoning is exactly why texting is so much more of a hassle. People don't think twice about sending multiple texts all the time, despite having reservations about making an actual phone call. This "non-intrusive" attitude about texting also means replying to them is much more obligatory. For those of you who attend workplace meetings, how often do you see the attendees answering text messages, playing games, or otherwise distracted by their smartphones, doing anything but paying attention to the meeting? How do we get anything done anymore?

I hear you, dude. I refuse to utilize texting as a form of communication because it is, IMHO, the single most trivial form of human communication devised thus far. If you have a device in your hand to communicate with me using your voice, fucking call me and talk to me. If it's not important enough for you to take the time to talk to me, then I don't need to hear what you have to say. Leave me alone, I've got other shit to do. I have even had clients attempt to contact me via text and have called them and told them point blank that I will not respond to text messages. I don't want them to get the idea that I'm their buddy or that I'm going to help them for free because it's a quick question for them to ask (and almost never quick for me to answer) and they've chose the least personal form of communication available to them. This is a business. I do this for a living.

That said, I am forced to have unlimited texting on my cell plan because SDQ does it all the time with her Internet buddies. It appears to me that it allows them to become more personally acquainted and available to each other than via message board, but it's still impersonal enough that they don't really have to feel like they're dealing with a real friend or give them all the courtesies that that kind of relationship normally affords.

It bothers me. I see so many people walking around with their faces buried in their phones, texting or web surfing or whatever, that they seem completely oblivious to what's going on around them, almost like zombies. School kids especially. My 12 year-old niece seems completely lost in the world because she's so used to having that phone out and texting constantly. It's like she doesn't even know what else to do and isn't even interested in anything unless it comes through that device. Hopefully she'll grow out of that, but it does not leave me with the easiest feeling about the future.

[Anguirel]

I tell people I don't have a text plan (for now, this is even the truth) explicitly because I dislike how text messages work -- they were an ok stop-gap solution. We now have dataplan phones. Send an e-mail, or use an IM program, or actually just call. Text messages are the most expensive possible way to communicate (and that's even more bulldrek since they're sent in a side-band that costs almost nothing for the providers to utilize).

Anywhere you feel it intrudes, turn it off. Don't let it be expected. Let people be annoyed. Annoyed means they'll learn. If it helps, tell your friends it's because your work place frowns on it, and your work people that your wife doesn't like it. Nothing like shifting the blame.

If you're in a position to do so, treat social media like smoking -- they get 15 minute breaks every 2 hours to deal with their social addictions. If you see it in between those breaks and they have no legitimate business reason for using it, you'd treat it just like if someone snuck out for a smoke break, or was drinking on the job, or was otherwise goofing off.

Use the "important" flags appropriately for e-mail, and set up filters so you only get bothered by actually important e-mails (the ones that should interrupt your work). Inform people if they abuse this that they should read and be guided by the story of the Boy who cried Wolf (i.e. that you'll set your filter to ignore them if they're misflagging things as important when they aren't). Let the others accumulate some, and then dedicate some time on a regular basis to go through them, instead of switching every time one comes in.

I live about as plugged in a life as possible. I spend multiple hours every night using Skype to carry on a relationship. I play all sorts of games. I am on a computer, and the internet, pretty much all day. I use my smartphone regularly. I don't allow any of that to replace real (or in the case of Skype, virtual) face-to-face contact where it is appropriate. I also barely use g+, and don't use facebook except as needed to see photos from my family members that seem to love it.

[3278]

All the concerns that have been raised are valid ones. New technology usually requires a period of adjustment, during which we change our behaviors and expectations to fit the new tools we have available to us. We will make these adjustments, but they won't leave us unchanged: I won't make value judgments about which is "better," but we'll be different. [This isn't new: poets lamented the invention of the chimney, which encouraged multi-room dwellings and led to separation of the classes; where once lord laid with serf around a common fire. Is our way worse? Would we trade?]

What I try to do is use the tools properly, and teach others how to use them properly. Texting, IMing, emailing, and calling all have their appropriate places and times. When people don't recognize them, I try to gently steer them toward my perception of appropriateness, but obviously this is subjective, as well. [This thread's hate on texting, for example, shows that not everyone agrees with my texting-heavy lifestyle, although I really only text one person anyway.]

What is almost unqualified "bad," is when public safety officers - and other government officials, says the guy whose county court office computer system "went down" today, leaving him unable to get basic information on active court cases - can't do their jobs without the technology. But at the same time, often there's just no reasonable alternative: my FoC office, for example, couldn't possibly justify paper backups! So we have to weigh reliability and indispensability and cost and all that. We don't want our cops beta testing on the job: I think we can all get behind that. But if I couldn't email my local courts - oh, by the way: I can't email my local courts - that would be a ridiculous breach of basic technological progress.

This will all shake out, by which time there will be 20 new technologies keeping us hopping, and accelerating all the time. We can't possibly hope to stop the elephant, but we can point and direct it, and deal intelligently with the aftermath.

[Serious Paul]

As a public employee nothing is more frustrating to me than my employer, the State, telling me how much money and time we'll save by using computers and then sitting back and watching as they contract the most ass backwards, retarded fuck boy contractor's they can get a kick back from; then I sit and watch as vast swaths of the system are inaccessible to me-for instance until we figured out how to bypass the damn system we couldn't get the various forms we need t print to do our job. Our system also pretty much craps out the moment it can get away with it. Printers go nuts and print until they run out of paper, the email system can barely handle more than three emails in the inbox before it over loads and everyone is locked out....the list goes on.

And what makes even funnier is we treat our computer security like we work for General Dynamics. I have seven passwords, for seven related but separate portions of the system. I have to change them whether I want to or need to every 30 days. All. Seven. At a time.

I fucking hate computers. I get where they could be really useful, and I do love using them at times. But yeah, I'd have stayed in the 1970's.