Just noticed this piece (extracted below) while I breezed through the NY Times this morning.
I must say that this brief extract mirrors my experience.
I have any number of friends and colleagues who have worked hard to eliminate or give up email … always because of the jam-ups they experienced, see always so that they could avoid much of the intrusion from unwanted communications, price and so that they would have more time to “converse” or communicate in other more effective ways. Now I am sure that they will spend much of their time in other, unintended intrusions from unwanted communications, or find out that email as a way of following and building a conversation, in context, is not so bad, etc.
I must say that I really dislike not getting replies to emails, which happens all too often. I take care, I think, not to send meaningless emails and work to limit their length, but I must say that I agree with the conclusion reached in the NY Times piee, that ““If you don’t, it is assumed you are out to lunch mentally, out of it socially, or don’t like the person who sent the e-mail.”
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Smartphone Rises Fast From Gadget to Necessity
[ Snip … ]
For a growing swath of the population, the social expectation is that one is nearly always connected and reachable almost instantly via e-mail. The smartphone, analysts say, is the instrument of that connectedness — and thus worth the cost, both as a communications tool and as a status symbol.
“The social norm is that you should respond within a couple of hours, if not immediately,” said David E. Meyer, a professor of psychology at the University of Michigan. “If you don’t, it is assumed you are out to lunch mentally, out of it socially, or don’t like the person who sent the e-mail.”
The spread of those social assumptions may signal a technological crossover that echoes the proliferation of e-mail itself more than a decade ago. At some point in the early 1990s, it became socially unacceptable — at least for many people — to not have an e-mail address.
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Correct link to the NYT article: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/10/technology/10phone.html
Thanks, Jack. Fixed.
I have to say I’ve started to long for the pre-Internet days in some ways. While I appreciate the ability to just email someone instead of going top the trouble of phoning, I also have a great deal of trepidation regarding the ever increasing pace of communication and people’s expectations thereof. Case in point is Google’s new Wave – fer crying out loud you don’t even get to wait until the person’s finished typing before you see what they’ve said you see it as they type. Not only is that ridiculous it’s an invitation to tremendous misunderstandings. Email/Chat is bad enough with the lack of body language etc to convey unconscious meanings, at least with those you can sit and ponder before replying – trying to mimic face to face conversation without body language or voice inflection clues is insane. I refuse, utterly refuse, to have a smart phone. If I get sent an email at work I’ll respond to it as fast as I can while I’m working but come the end of my work day I’m incommunicado so far as customers are concerned.
hope this made sense Jon – I’ve been into the rum for awhile tonight already 🙂
I’ve been into the rum for awhile tonight already
Are you one of the 4 Guys (I’ve seen one too many Captain Morgan’s commercials) ? Rum is just a dandy bevvie, I think.
I too find myself reflecting, lost in images and remembered smells from my youth and adolescence, when there was less activity in the air .. and less cynicism and generalized vague fear / anxiety. When people did not work on weekends. When televisions only had 13 channels and a round dial. Party lines in the rural areas.
One of the things I love about my travels to far-off places is the relative simplicity and (much) slower pace of life, the (much) greater sociality and my probably-wrong observations that priorities abput life, time, space and the role of work and consumption.
I don’t think anyone knows what all we are up to collectively .. other than we are being shown the limits of rationality, and then some.
I too do not have a smartphone.