Monday, May 22, 2006
Technology verses Solitude - The Ultimate Battle
This is a storey out of todays Age. I thought it was worth posting as it talks about an issue that I am often reminded of. Being a small business owner, I often feel the pressure to remain contactable and in touch with the world however it is something that I purposly fight against.
Everyone has a story about the intrusiveness of the mobile phone: of the boss who rings while his employee is on a family holiday; of the young woman who embarrasses a bus full of people by her loud argument with a friend; of people on trains who bray into their phones about personal topics ranging from their love lives - "I said to him ..." - to the state of their innards - "Yeah no, the doctor reckons ..."
For the workaholic, the constant contact offered by a mobile can become an emotional umbilical cord and his relationship with his phone can compete with his real relationships. A Sydney organisational psychologist, Grant Brecht, tells of one couple who came to see him at the wife's insistence. They had taken a "holiday" together, only to have the husband bring along two mobile phones and spend at least six hours a day talking about work on them. "But my wife is my first priority," he told Brecht in the first session.
What price this noisy revolution, with its demands for everyone to be available everywhere, 24/7? How do we pay for the convenience of being able to keep tabs on the children while we are at work, and tabs on work while we are with the children? What is happening to solitude, attentiveness and the boundaries between public and private in the age of mobiles and BlackBerries, SMS and email?
# posted by Dr Dan @ 1:07 pm 
Comments:
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The mobile has become such an integral part of life now. I don't know what I'd do without mine, it's almost like a security blanket. But I think it's a very sad state of affairs when it becomes a substitute for actual relationships. Even the relationship with yourself. The inability to spend time alone and experience real solitude is a terrible thing indeed. One that I am guilty of constantly.
I often find it funny getting off a plane. People's initial action is to either race and have a smoke or turn on their phones to check messages. It's that fear of missing something, being left out of the loop. Similar to the need for a smoke it's the need for a degree of control of our own world.
No it's not Steve. It's our dependance on it and our insistance to use it to replace other interactions. I must admit Dan, I am one of those peopel who races off a plane and turns on their phoen...
phoens are almost as big a problem ;P
I think, seriously we should adopt the idea of Lent.
What would you give up that has power over you? 'fasting' from technology might be an interesting practise!
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I think, seriously we should adopt the idea of Lent.
What would you give up that has power over you? 'fasting' from technology might be an interesting practise!
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