Do you ever find yourself in one of those conversations where you wonder how you got through high school without a cell phone? Or how people were ever productive without email?
I was in a conversation that was heading that direction, but it took a turn. I found myself asking, “What would I do without the Internet? Could I make it through an entire day at work completely offline? How about a week? a month? And then I thought, “How did my grandparents work their entire careers without ever checking a score on espn.com, or catching up over IM, or taking a few minutes to watch someone get hurt really badly on YouTube?” Basically, how could you just…work?
That’s the thought that caught me off guard. I started feeling pretty flighty for how dependent I am on the Internet, and how weak my generation’s work ethic seems in comparison to our parents and grandparents. We’ve done some great things, no doubt, but could we survive 40 years of selling insurance to names in the White Pages? I don’t think I could.
I got my first email address when I was 18. First cell phone at 21. I stumbled into Napster at 22, first used instant messenger at around 23, joined my first social network and tinkered with day trading at about 24, started my first blog at 25, and discovered the wonders of RSS that same year. Sometime during all of that I created accounts on eBay, Amazon, Flickr, and started texting but I couldn’t say exactly when. Now a few years later on any given day I’m on several of the above plus Facebook apps, a couple forums, Techmeme, iTunes, and whatever beta signup Techcrunch is giving away that day. Thank goodness I’ve mostly avoided Twitter so far, but the iPhone app store has proven too much (if you like your job and want to keep it don’t download Enigmo).
What’s funny is I always have considered myself a hard worker. I even have this get-down-to-business quote by Lance Armstrong within arm reach of where I’m typing this post:
“Everybody wants to know what I’m on. What am I on? I’m on my bike bustin’ my ass six hours a day. What are you on?”
Ignore the fact that not too long ago I wrote a post on work. I’m nowhere near my Grandpa, a farmer in his 90’s who still pulls his boots on six days a week. And that worries me a bit.
The Times (UK) published an article that accuses pretty much all of us of chronic distraction. It says we have fallen slave to hundreds of daily interruptions – mostly perpetrated by the Internet – and that they’re slowly ruining us. Sounds a bit Chicken Little, but it obviously resonated enough to make me read it. OK I skimmed it. (3 chat windows open at the time, can’t keep people waiting.)
Taken to its logical conclusion, how does this end? It ends with my generations’ contribution to the world marginalized by millions of little ding! noises. Our media consumption habits are the dietary equivalent of cotton candy, yet we’re expected to solve some of the toughest problems our world has ever faced.
Has technology made us more efficient? Absolutely. But we’re kidding ourselves if we think we can equal our parents’ accomplishments without equaling their work ethic. At some point, we’ve all got to simply disconnect and get back to work (1). I’m not calling for an all out boycott of the web. I’m just saying that we all could stand to hit refresh a few less times each day, and set the bar a little higher on where we invest our attention. It’s not just required of us, we wouldn’t expect anything less of ourselves.
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(1) I see the irony in publishing this on a blog, but I don’t think blogs – good ones at least – are the culprit. (This does not apply to Perez Hilton.) Blogging is a great way to vet ideas, and “there is nothing more powerful than an idea whose time has come.” (Victor Hugo)
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