Escape from Blackberry
by Bill Ives
Much of Enterprise 2.0 is about asynchronous communication. Blog, wikis, social bookmarking, et al provide common spaces to create, share, and archive information. RSS lets us decide what we get. The break through is transparency but one that makes things more efficient and less of a burden. Here is a great story on what happens when asynchronous tools become real time. I think things could become overwhelming if everyone felt the need to be connected to all these great new tools real time, all the time. We might lose the control that these new tools give us over communication.
Paul Levy is the CEO of large Boston hospital and he writes the blog, Running a Hospital. Jessica Lipnack pointed me to his post, Blackberry Cold Turkey. Here he describes his liberation for his Blackberry. I agree so much with what he says.
Paul writes about the bad effects of having constant access to your email when you are away from your computer, “manners disappear. We sit in meetings and, at best, try to look at our handheld screen without appearing to be distracted from the conversation. You have seen the maneuvers — a casual glance towards the crotch where fingers are quickly at work — a sudden excuse to go to the restroom — a coughing fit so the person can turn away from the table and check the Blackberry. At worst, we just put the device on the conference table in front of our face and divest from the conference. Worse still, relationships disappear. A couple sits side by side at an airport, each reading and writing email on their two machines. A child impatiently waits to talk to a parent while the driver hurriedly answers an email while stopped at a red light.”
With RSS it could be worse as we could get updated through a mobile device on blogs, wikis, social bookmarking, as well as email. This is why I disliked IM and why I do not have a Blackberry. People often expected (or I felt oligated) to stop what I was doing and answer an IM. But I may be an extreme case. I even resisted cell phones for a while and usually leave mine off, except by prior arrangement with someone who needs to reach me. Now that I am no longer in a large consulting company, I do not have IM and I do not give out my cell phone number for business except on rare occasions. There are places for real time communication and there are times for asynchronous communication. We need to have our personal spaces and we need to be able to focus on what is happening right in front of us. Kudos to Paul.
