Posted on 06/07/2010 9:37:40 AM PDT by NYer
SAN FRANCISCO — When one of the most important e-mail messages of his life landed in his in-box a few years ago, Kord Campbell overlooked it.
Not just for a day or two, but 12 days. He finally saw it while sifting through old messages: a big company wanted to buy his Internet start-up.
“I stood up from my desk and said, ‘Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God,’ ” Mr. Campbell said. “It’s kind of hard to miss an e-mail like that, but I did.”
The message had slipped by him amid an electronic flood: two computer screens alive with e-mail, instant messages, online chats, a Web browser and the computer code he was writing.While he managed to salvage the $1.3 million deal after apologizing to his suitor, Mr. Campbell continues to struggle with the effects of the deluge of data. Even after he unplugs, he craves the stimulation he gets from his electronic gadgets. He forgets things like dinner plans, and he has trouble focusing on his family.
His wife, Brenda, complains, “It seems like he can no longer be fully in the moment.”
This is your brain on computers.
Scientists say juggling e-mail, phone calls and other incoming information can change how people think and behave. They say our ability to focus is being undermined by bursts of information.
These play to a primitive impulse to respond to immediate opportunities and threats. The stimulation provokes excitement — a dopamine squirt — that researchers say can be addictive. In its absence, people feel bored.
The resulting distractions can have deadly consequences, as when cellphone-wielding drivers and train engineers cause wrecks.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
I have two email accounts (business and personal), then I get Tweets from Sarah Palin, Fox News and a handful of others.
I had to turn off NRA News because they over-tweet, resulting in wasting my time.
The key is to manage the information flow you receive.
What was this thread about, again?
If you and your spouse IM each other while in the same room, you might be addicted to computers.
That is truly pathetic! What have we come to as a society when we can no longer personally interact with our fellow man?!
Depends on what you’re texting about ... if its a subtle hint that its time to retire to more comfortable surroundings ... the texting can be like foreplay LOL.
IMHO, the problem is with the TYPE of technology.
With laptops and Blackberries (or the like), people are kept tethered to work 24/7/365. What used to be a 9-5 job, or even a 60-or-80-hour-a-week job, never really goes away. There's no real downtime to refresh and recharge, ever.
I recently took a week off. Without going into all of the details, I was incommunicado with work. Completely. Cut off entirely (no laptop, no phone, and if I turned on my cell, Mrs WBill would have shot me).
I gave them plenty of notice, left messages, updated my voicemails, set automated replies to all of my emails, and so on. Work still tried to get in touch with me a number of times, then wondered why I hadn't gotten back to them more immediately when I returned.
FWIW, the company was still standing when I got back. There was a list waiting for me, and I had 547 emails to sort through (3 of which were actually important) ... but the place didn't go out of business.
My next vacation is going to be on a deserted island, I think, with no electricity or phone coverage. Looking forward to it already.
Heh. Maybe it’s not my aging brain that’s causing short attention span and short term memory impairment.
One question: Would this photo have any less impact had the two of them been reading the NY Times with dead trees in their hands?
For a century THAT was the common picture of breakfast at the American table.
I learned that lesson from a co-worker of mine while working my way through college in a retail store. He was a mid-level manager, while I was an underling in another department.
After I got to know him he told me a story about a situation he had with the company a couple of years earlier. He was away on vacation when an "emergency" came up (it was actually a visit from some big-wigs at the company's corporate office, which was a big deal but wasn't exactly a dire situation) -- and the store manager called him back from vacation for a couple of days.
The following summer he went on a fishing trip in Canada with a group of his friends. The store manager told him he needed to leave a contact phone number in case an "emergency" came up and he needed to be reached. My friend said he was going to be out of reach. When the store manager pressed him on it, he said: "You don't understand -- we're going to a fishing outpost in one of the most remote places in North America. It doesn't even have electricity. If you need to get in touch with me, I'll leave the phone number for the outfitter's office and they can send a message out to me with the weekly re-supply plane."
One of the lessons I learned back then is that being "in contact" all the time is not a good thing. I practice my own sense of being "disconnected" by avoiding the use of my company's instant messenger and by shutting off my e-mail for a couple of hours at a time while I get work done.
New trend, or a few freaks that the press tries to play up as typical to get you to read the story?
If you are so into computers like this nobody likes you anyway.
Well if they start sexting each other then they are in trouble.
Not from the press, some friends went to a wedding this weekend and took pictures of the bride and groom doing it. I saw the pictures when they got back. They told me they've seen it at other weddings and that it's become a trend.
What?
No World of Warcraft character?!?
At some point, the ubiquity of devices will make staying in contact a condition of employment and being incommunicado inexcusable.
Same as being required for a meeting across town at a certain time and pleading that you have no access to a car.
“That is truly pathetic! What have we come to as a society when we can no longer personally interact with our fellow man?!”,he posted.
Workaholic idiots who are insecure that someone might figure out they’re not indispensable at work, and so make themselves available all the time, are setting unreasonable expectations for the rest of us. Personally, although I work for a technology company, unless something particularly pressing is going on I’m not available outside working hours. When I go on vacation I am completely unavailable to my employer. I might get on to the internet once or twice when I’m vacation to check my email and such, as the opportunity presents itself, just in case something important comes in (although it rarely does), but in general I have no trouble disconnecting. I also think people constantly checking emails and the web while they’re (supposed to be, anyway) interacting socially with others are really quite rude.
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