Life Defined...by Crackberry
James Governor comments on Crackberries, RIM, and life:
And who has done more than RIM to change the boundaries of work and play, personal and business communications in this era called 2.0? RIM is the most important company in Office and Enterprise 2.0 in terms of behavioural change, worklife balance and so on. RIM manages you 24 hours a day.
The minute that RIM, or any other instantaneous 'information vendor' "manages" me 24 hours a day is about the time when a gun should be placed in my mouth and the trigger fired, because I've essentially lost it. I reckon that I'm too old-school to have my life dictated by any device - telephone, laptop, a PDA, or cell phone. I'm happy with that, thank you very much.
God help the 'instant-on' human being - there are too many nuances and great moments in life, wherever such a life leads, to be hamstrung by a device and its services - and yes, I have more than one of these devices. And they are off or not attended to at various moments such as airline travel, time intimately spend with loved ones, spending time with friends and family, and such. Do I address all of these inputs later? Of course, when I choose to, not when RIM or any other utility dictates that I must.
Governor would have you believe that the latency period between someone's email, IM, or response to your blog post is something along the matter of seconds, or perhaps if you're fortunate, minutes. If you're willing to put up to being a slave to your electronics, then have at it.
If you truly don't want a life, there's not much better along these lines than slavery. Your choice, as always.
Actually I prefer asynchronous comms. its why i am a big twitter fan. not much of an IM user, occasional IRC.
As Nick Carr surmised, there is an obvious downside to the effect I was describing.
Posted by: James Governor | October 03, 2007 at 06:03 PM