Can we live without all this technology?

Posted by sarah at Mon, 30/03/2009 - 5:59am in Social media

Mandate's Jasmine Richards blogged about the Vatican's call for followers to give up 21^st century forms of communication for lent.  The consensus in the Mandate office was that life as we know it would grind to a virtual halt.  Would we have to post press releases?  Fax the Order Paper? Send meeting requests by telegram?

On a more personal level, I struggle to complete Lent without chocolate, let alone thinking about going without my daily Perez Hilton fix and a quick browse through facebook.

Today it would appear that one brave journalist has endured the ultimate 21^st century communications sacrifice all in the name of a good story. The Guardian's Tanya Gold turned off her mobile and powered down her PC - ok - not quite for the 40 days suggested by the Vatican, but still a week is pretty impressive.

And the end result? Well, unsurprisingly the experiment proved a steep challenge and ultimately when a letter came from the Editor prompting about the deadline the experiment ended and the computer went back in order to file on time. 

Not enough to make me consider taking on this challenge, but it has made me think about the growing email culture both in the workplace and socially.  (Never fear help is on hand if you inbox is in meltdown.)

Do we really need the excessive flood of emails and is it replacing face-to-face contact time?  Is there the risk of a generation of ‘crackberry' addicts?  Realistically the answer to both is no - but perhaps I will think twice before emailing someone who sits next to me, and relax the blackberry use, after all nobody wants to end up with "Blackberry Thumb". 

Already I'm itching to check my email, just a couple won't hurt....

Tagged with: Blackberry, Facebook, technology