Am I even here? Feeling disconnected in an age of hyper connectivity.
Am I even here… I’ve been marinating on this idea for quite some time and have decided to focus this week’s blog post on the question of the value of hyper connectivity and the human experience.
Standing in line at Starbucks, I over hear two women share their experience of being young working mothers. The challenges they faced while balancing their work responsibilities and their home responsibilities. One mother says to the other “I work from home part time in order to keep up with everything I need to do… Work… Chores… Be a MOM”. Mom number two responds “Me too. I have no idea how I would keep up if I couldn’t spend time working from home. I spend a few hours in the office and then I go home and work online while I do the laundry and run the dishwasher… I have no idea how I could possibly take care of everything without the internet…” Back to mom number one who say, “Can you imagine what it was like for our parents? How did they ever do it?”
The scenario highlights the upside of the productive parent and the joys of being able to “work from anywhere”, but what about other sectors of the population who do not have children, or a partner or a full time job? In my current line of work I am just an email away from any client at any time… one email away from working at any given moment and one email away from not working at any given moment. The upside… I can work from wherever I want, servicing clients around the world, so long as I can connect to the internet. But what if I want to connect to people?
Well… currently I could log in to a variety of social networks and look at the ways people are promoting themselves to the outside world. I could log in and read the thoughts and ramblings of people to see what is on their mind and see what they both struggle with and celebrate in a public platform day to day. But what if I actually wanted to see someone and read their facial responses and reactions while we have a conversation? Where would I turn for that sort of social interaction?
In previous generations people went to work in offices, collaborated on projects, accomplished goals, and in the interim shared their lives with one another. They worked together, spent time together and they shared experiences together. The current working paradigm has shifted so drastically that the teams may not see each other for weeks or months at a time. They won’t be able to have the same shared experiences as were previously offered in the working environment.
My freelance business is a very part time collection of odds and ends creative projects for small business and home owners. My work flow is patched together by an inbox of email tasks and text messages and at times I rarely actually see a client and they rarely actually see me… which leads to me question… Am I even here? In this world of hyper connectivity, am I more connected or less connected to my clients and their businesses? Email, text, facebook, twitter and the like have removed the personality of interpersonal communication and we have a new problem on our hands… how can we find personal connection while everyone is hyper connected? Is the smart phone in my hand keeping me connected to my friends and family or serving as a distraction to what is happening right in front of me?
It’s a tough topic to handle in one blog post, but is an interesting topic to start to explore while I am attending BDW. The work at BDW consists of bridging the digital and physical worlds. How can we use technology to enhance the human experience? How can we leverage new tools to keep people connected? Can we find the middle ground? A place that leverages new technologies and keeps us connected with one another? Maybe I’ll have a better appreciation of working from home when I have children and a partner… but until that day I have to wonder… in the fast paced world of email, text and facebook… am I even here?
