Monday Morning Greys

Well, everyone has the blues. I am a South African living in Ireland for the last 6 years now. The Irish always boast about the 14 shades of green of the emerald Isle. Well, they kind of omit the fact that for 6 months of the year, it boasts 16 shades of grey during the winter months.

It is Monday morning, the start of a bright new week of opportunities and the marvel of watching the changes taking place in our wonderful world. I never cease to be amazed at the pace of change over the last decade. And now, over the last 5 years, it seems to move and change at an accelerating pace with the advent of broadband. Bandwidth used to be domain of large wealthy companies. Now 13 year olds have access to more bandwidth than many large companies had 10 years ago. In fact, around 2000 the entire country of South Africa used around 142Mb international access.

It is interesting watching how things change, but also how these changes affect us. I am now enjoying my mid morning coffee break, having completed reading my emails and responding to those I wished to whilst pondering the remaining ones. I have checked my LinkedIn account to see whether I have any new connections to my network, and to read the questions posed. Answered a few of those as mental stimulation, reading the answers of others. In my Inbox I had a mail from McKinsey, so I opened that and it contained an interesting article on 'The Halo Effect, and other Managerial Delusions'. Sounded right up my alley, so I downloaded the PDF (I have a subscription to McKinsey), read the article and chuckled as I agreed with most of what the Author, Phil Rosenzweig had to say. Filed it under Articles in My Documents, and printed out a hard copy to file for reference purposes (So much for the paperless office, but generally I seldom print things out, unless it really takes my fancy...).

Next I read my CNet subscriptions. Nothing overtly fascinating today, but then I found a little gem, www.webware.com/8301-1_109-9693246-2.html?tag=cnetfd.mt about Ning, the new alternative to YouTube. Sounds brilliant so I tag it with Deli.cio.us so I can get back to it later when I have more time. Quickly scooted over to Total Content & Media to see what has happened in the weird and wonderful world of the media and telecoms world. The most interesting and least surprising bit was YouTube striking a deal with BBC over their clips. Hmmm... probably to avoid another Viacom issue.

Still have to get to my RSS feeds and update my daily podcasts. I listen to them in the car when I drive home and to work each morning and evening. Gives me time to catch up. I seldom seem to listen to the radio or watch TV anymore.

The question is, with all the technology we use, have we improved our lives, or have we created more pressure on ourselves trying to keep up with all the things that we now have access to? We have more choices than ever before, but in order to make informed choices we have to try things. When we try them, do we become bound to them in the fear that we may lose track of some vital little gem of information that may come through this means like a grain of wheat through the chaff, or are we able to manage our use of technology responsibly?

Sometimes when I watch the way in which people use mobile phones, I fear people have lost their individuality as they live by their mobile phones being available on demand to anyone that wishes to call them, forgetting that their phones have voice mail and text facilities and that it is OK to sometimes be out of reach, no-one will take offense. And if they do, they probably deserve to be avoided.

I think we need to stand back from the technology and take back our lives, using the technology to enhance and enrich our daily communication, but not become slaves to it.