Technology in our lives, business affects vs personal overlap

For this last blog I would like to address how communication technology affects our personal lives as well as our business lives and how they overlap; again focusing on Smartphones. As we all know the first blackberry with email, the 850 models were designed with business efficiency in mind. However, after their introduction and growth in popularity they started to take over our personal time. Before Smartphone email capability personal and business communication were separate. One worked from the time they clocked in to the time they clocked out. Most people didn’t even have ‘personal computers’, or ‘iMacs’ and the Blackberry opened the market to the general public. It quickly developed the nickname “Crackberry” because those that owned one were on it all the time. They would receive emails at all hours of the day and regardless of where they were they started to respond to email anywhere, with their girlfriend, with their wife, with their kids, with their parents or other types of private time that was once divided from business time and held high personal value. The email capabilities of the Blackberry changed the face of communication, as we knew it because it became an expectation that you would receive emails like text messages and in turn respond, which also developed the need for full keyboards on phones. The early models had a mechanical wheel and push buttons that wore out due to intense use. This ability to check email continued to evolve with the Smartphone to the point where it was standard on any phone, and the Blackberry platform began to fade into the background of the emerging Google platform, known as Android, and the ever dominant iPhone and Mac platforms. When these two key platforms were introduced they revolutionized the face of communication beyond what Blackberry ever imagined. They completely merged personal and business life. Their phones were given the capability to process multiple email accounts at once, therefore receiving both personal and business emails on our phones at all hours of the day. The rapid growth of technological advancement has made us all require quick and instant feedback. It has skewed our sense of time and space to the point that we miss our own lives as they fly by us. We don’t take the time to enjoy our personal lives anymore; our true one-on-one interactions. Personally when I am at dinner with someone or with a group I refuse to use my phone because I feel like anything that is happening on it can wait 45 minutes to an hour for a response and I can give the other person(s) my full attention for a bit and check out from my phone. At the same time as a server I watch people sitting at dinner, especially on dates, that wont hesitate to take a phone call at the table, and then proceed to be on the phone for thirty minutes, which I watch ruin their dinner. What is the point of going to dinner with someone when they spend all of their time on the phone? For whatever their reason for taking that call in the middle of dinner, it most likely has to do with business, that call “I have to take.” The Blackberry started the trend but it was honed and refined by the newest, most complex systems we have ever seen; systems that sync with our computers, facebook, twitter, mobile banking, gps and more. Systems that change our perception of time and space; time now moves faster than ever before and no one notices it because it feels normal; space that constantly shrinks and makes the world feel so much smaller, from face-time to the ability to look up anything or keep updates on anything you want. I know the goal of these Smartphones was to make things more efficient, and while they have accomplished that in general, they have had some negative effects on our personal lives. They merge everything we do into one big clump. They force us to never be focused on one specific thing at a time because we are constantly multitasking on our phones while we do other things. And they cause our family lives to suffer because we always feel detached to our families, because our families feel like we are not truly invested in our relationships. I think as a whole Smartphones have been beneficial to our world, and I will admit, I love mine. However it is a necessity to separate our personal lives from our business lives, to check out of the business communication world and into the personal communication world for a little while and be there 100%; for our girlfriends, wives, kids, parents, siblings and more. We need to find a way to balance it all out, and keep it as sincere as possible. After all, success in life in measured in many ways, but happiness in life is determined by the quality of our relationships and the only way to maintain them, we must give them our full attention more often than not. I know it feels like we will die if we don’t check our phones every ten minutes, but the reality is, we will be fine, we will have higher quality relationships, we will be less stressed out, and by default, we will be much happier than if we allow our personal and business lives to intertwine themselves as they so desperately cling to each other and try to take over. We must take a stand and give our personal relationships the investment they deserve.