Too Much Tech Diminishes Work Relationships? 195
Lansdowne writes "The Seattle Times has an article today on Tim Sanders, a Yahoo exec who claims too much technology may be bad for your health. According to Sanders, small groups of engineers who went to completely electronic communication in their workgroups became 'very lonely, depressed, negative, anti-social, brilliant people.'"
As an engineering student... (Score:3, Interesting)
But hey, what do I know, I'm just a very lonely, depressed, negative, anti-social, brilliant Engineering student.
Re:perhaps thge other way around? (Score:5, Interesting)
Call me old fashioned, but I still thrive on human interaction regardless of how obsolete it may be these days. Really, given if we all had the money, I'm willing to bet there are more people like me who would get rid of all of their technology and live a more simple, fulfilling life.
Limits... (Score:5, Interesting)
This quote from the article makes me wonder whether we're reading too much into it. This is someone who replaced face to face communication with his employees. That's not a problem with technology: that's him being irrespsonsible.
I think (hope) that we all know there's a time and place for technology. Things like employee appraisals and agreeing big pieces of work should really be done face to face.
The question that we thought was being answered was whether having more technological gadgets would create problems for people in themselves?
I'm in the camp who believe that technology actually improves relationships when used appropriately, rather than damages him.
Friends overseas? It's a shame they're not here, but I can use ICQ to keep in touch with them.
Feel like a drink? I can call around my friends to see who's around.
Really want the obnoxious sex-mad guy to come? Just snap a photo/video of the cute girl next to you and he'll be along in a jiffy.
People can do more, in less time, with more people.
Everyone wins. Especially the communications companies.
Re:perhaps thge other way around? (Score:3, Interesting)
Near-Miss (Score:5, Interesting)
You know, when I started my career in IT, I was the happy helpful SysAdmin. I would cheerfully respond to request after request because I loved helping my fellow employees have a positive computing experience.
I never understood why people always thought SysAdmins were grumpy and belligerent.
However, now after a decade of thankless shit-catching, I am that grumpy and belligerent SysAdmin who believes that users are a fucking plague of idiots set loose in Biblical proportions upon my otherwise Utopian computer networks.
Comments such as "your message titled 'Virus Warning - Happy New Year' had the word 'Virus' in it, so I deleted it to be safe, but then I opened the next one that had an attachment called 'Happy New Year'. Now my computer doesn't work right..." (honest-to-God true story) have made me tend to side with the machines while watching such movies as "Terminator" and "Matrix", and to create tools named for the Borg which enforce draconian administration of my networks.
Are we anti-social because of the machines, or because people are morons?
Nothing Changes (Score:5, Interesting)
For example, about 150 years ago, someone said how young women should not ride bicycles because it made them less attractive, had bad effects on their health & fertility and gave them grumpy looking faces.
More recently, it was forecast that telephones would cause people to loose touch with their friends and family. ffs Many people here only contact their family on the phone.
Up to the present, they said that children who played with their PC and consoles would be less able and mentally active than children who didn't. Then they realised that the kids who "didn't" were all on the couch watching TV. Any kid who was online or playing games was actually using their brain.
Conclusion?
People have been moaning about new ideas, music and technology for a very long time. I'm sure Aristotle had something to say on the matter and if his statement was put into a modern paper, nobody would notice. (if it was translated first!)
It's all downhill from here... (Score:3, Interesting)
Seriouslly if it weren't for my son I would just as well spend my whole life online. I'm tired of interfacing with mundane's. The only people I can stand are other techies.
From Personal Experience (Score:5, Interesting)
(Keep in mind this is based on personal experiences)
- Many people do not own a landline phone unless they have ADSL.
- Many people do not use email anymore due to spam.
- Many people do not use IMs as they are far too many in number, and again have the spam issue.
This means they are often unavailable to a real-time communications, potentially emergency communications.
Some people take it to extremes, avoiding people by not using the methods they know their friends or family use, or by leaving everything to voicemail/email/IMs and simply ignoring messages. It's amazingly easy to ignore people when you have caller ID on your phones too.
Of those who do stay connected (often via every means possible), here are some behaviors I've noticed:
- Many people are getting obsessive about checking email, how much they're getting, and how they can get more without subscribing to mailing lists.
- Talking on the cellphone during obviously inappropriate and/or plain dangerous activities.
- Leaving their status as 'online' on all IMs to maybe increase the chance somebody wants to talk.
- Gotta have a landline, cellphone, PDA, MP3-man, [insert nifty new devices here].
I think more than anything, the current state of technology and communication is forcing the shy folks into hiding, and giving an amazing opportunity for all the people (worthy or not) of all that extra exposure to expose whatever it is they want to.
You're going to get morons. You're going to get brilliant individuals. And their profession really doesn't matter any more than it used to, the pace of life and the introduction of technology is simply accelerating people's reactions too.
Re:Then why isn't it true for me? (Score:2, Interesting)
I think different people have markedly different experiences. My guess is that surrounding oneself with technology (or any other collection of inanimate objects) can exacerbate an already existing condition in people.
Sit down and let me tell you a tale. I was sexually abused as a kid, so was at high risk for depression (abuse can be nasty) and insulating myself from the world (I learned, mistakenly, that the world was too dangerous). Once I discovered computers, I found an ideal way to escape from the world: these things were almost infinitely interesting (new stuff is being developed all the time), and I didn't have to deal with that scary thing we call "the world". (Of course, I didn't realize at the time that that was one of my motives.) Whee! What a great hobby!
Now, years later, I'm trying to reconnect myself with the real world after going through a years-long episode of depression. It's not easy, and it's kinda frightening. But I notice that every time I start burrowing myself in my computery hobby, I'm always more depressed and disconnected from the world.
I realize that my experience may be different from other people's, but I just wanted to illustrate that a predisposition to depression can be "turned on" by heavy computer use.
Re:Flawed experiment (and conclusion!) (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Balance (Score:2, Interesting)
I moved out of my old job partly because two of the people I worked with are friends from wayback. In my new job, which I probably got because two of the three people on the management people development commitee are my friends (grin), my informal, actual, job function is to talk to other people about the work that my section (computer aided engineering) is doing.
As to the article in general, it sounds like "whiny whiny whiny" to me.
Re:perhaps thge other way around? (Score:3, Interesting)
In my job, I can either go in to my (fairly social) office, or work at home (shuttered away with just a computer), pretty much at my option. At the office, people walked in every 5 minutes with some question or other. I couldn't get anything done. So I took to working from home almost all the time, and people would e-mail me questions (but not with nearly the frequency). Got huge amounts done, but almost went batty. From that experience, I'd say the article is right on. Now I work from home about a third of the time. But even when I'm at the office, I make it clear that if you want me to actually deal with something important, email me. (If you need a fourth for a foosball game, walk on in!)