Today's society is, as we all know, becoming more and more connected. No matter where we go, we are bombarded with communications and requests for our attention. I'm not just talking about more radio commercials, billboards, or whatever it is that WalMart decides to blast at you from TV monitors while you're shopping. It's mobile phones and mobile email devices that keep demanding our attention.
It used to be that if you had a white collar job, you had a desk and a phone. If you didn't answer your phone during regular business hours you were most likely either in a meeting, at lunch, or taking a brief personal break. People knew that you'd return their call when you got the message. Nobody expected to get in touch with you or anything else after hours. Even the case of the traveling salesman worked fine without mobile devices. When his meeting was done, he either borrowed the clients phone or went back to the hotel to call the main office. Work was separate from your personal life.
Today we're still a bunch of white collar desk jockeys, but along with the desk and desk phone, employers insist you have a mobile phone as well. Now you can be disrupted in meetings and at lunch. Odds are you'll get disturbed during your personal breaks too. Granted, times have changed, and there are some things that need more immediate attention, like servers crashing, networks going down, and other such issues found in today's technological age. However, for the most part, business is business, and nothing is so critical that it can't wait five minutes for you to get back to your desk after using the restroom.
It's understandable that people who have other people's lives at stake in their profession, such as doctors and paramedics, should be as connected as possible. In those cases, having immediate access to emails, medical records, and the like could mean the difference between life and death. However, the majority of the populace do not work in fields which have such life and death scenarios. Nobody is going to die because the sales figures for the last quarter were down from their estimates. So why do we all insist on being tethered by our electronic leashes on a 24/7 basis when the most bloodshed most of us will ever encounter in the workforce is a paper cut?
Everywhere you turn someone's mobile phone is ringing, someone else is engaging in "cell yell," and yet a third person is busy vigorously engaging in text messaging or even email. Families are sitting around the table in a restaurant and quite often there is at least one person on the phone. Upscale restaurants are not immune either, nor are cultural events. You can sit and watch the symphony and odds are that you'll hear at least one phone ring during the concert. Afterwards you can go out, spend over $100 per person on dinner, drinks, and dessert, and still be inundated by someone in the restaurant blabbing away on their mobile at their table.
Mobile phone calls and constant email capability are intruding more and more into our lives on a daily basis. In some cases it's just a minor nuisance from someone nearby. Other times this connectivity puts others in dangerous situations, such as driving while talking on the mobile phone (and thus being distracted). If that's not bad enough, there are also the phone calls and such which take us away from our personal time. Time meant to be spent with family, or sometimes time meant to spend alone, with nobody disturbing you as you unwind from a day at the office.
Certainly people need to stop and think about being courteous towards others around them when it comes to mobile devices. However, there seems to be an even larger need for people to realize what their attention towards their devices is potentially doing to their families and loved ones as well as their own mental health. It takes mere seconds to double check one's device before entering the theatre or a restaurant. At home it takes just a few moments to go an put the device in another room, or again, mere moments to put it on silent if you have to be on call for something. It may take some getting used to, not getting your emails on your mobile device, but in the end it's worth the temporary discomfort of disconnecting one's self from our modern, electronic world in order to better enjoy the reality of life around us.
The revolution will be televised. Do we really need to be emailed and texted about it as well?
