Constant shades of grey

Connectivity - is it a blessing or curse? Does it make us more productive?

By Jenna Woolley, Auckland | Thursday, 18 August 2011
Connectivity - is it a blessing or curse? Does it make us more productive? Does it give us better control over our lives? Personally, I’m on the fence with this one.

Technology allows us to be constantly connected to all aspects of our lives. We connect to friends around the world instantly, day and night. We’re connected to work 24x7 as well. Gone are the black and white divisions of our personal and working lives; in its place – constant shades of grey.

I grew up in a pretty typical New Zealand family; two adults, two children and a landline. As time and technology progressed, we acquired an early model cellphone (I actually hesitate to use the term ‘mobile’ here), better known as “the brick” and a single desktop computer which eventually became dial-up enabled.

Now, when I look at my family, there are two adults, three children, six mobile phones (including three Blackberries and an Android) and five laptops. How times change!

We have the PS2, Xbox 360, two Nintendo DS, an e-book reader, MySky, Freeview, PVR, BluRay player, Bluetooth landlines, wireless broadband and datacards all sitting in a networked home. And this excludes the technology graveyard also known as ‘the pink draws’. These hold a treasure chest of cables, connectors, computer components, old technology and cellphones in various stages of decay and malfunction (on today’s count there are five).

We have nine email addresses, as well as Facebook, LinkedIn and Skype accounts. We are ultimately a mobile family and almost always connected, or perhaps more accurately – that is the goal. Few things irritate a parent as much as going straight to voicemail because the kids haven’t turned on or charged their phones!

The girls do their homework online. School projects are done in PowerPoint and then emailed to the teacher. My twenty-month old daughter can work an iPod and Android phone and sits at a computer any chance she gets.

Our phone books prop up my daughter’s highchair, and I honestly can’t remember the last time I looked at a map book.

We cook dinner smartphone in hand, and when we’re lacking inspiration the phone, or the trusty laptop, have new and creative recipes at our fingertips. When we sit down to eat, our ever-present companions Blackberry and Android come too.

Greg and I take turns driving to work, so the other can clear emails. Even watching a movie with the family on a rainy Sunday afternoon, I sit writing this column (and truth be told I’m also checking emails and chatting with a friend overseas). Greg sits beside me, Android in hand, checking emails, TradeMe progress and surfing the web.

The only time Greg and I really take a break is when we’re out of range. Sick days, holidays and weekends all become fair game. For modern professionals, being connected is almost expected; when emails arrive, you respond. When the phone rings, you answer it. But does this allow us to do our work more productively, or just to do more work? The level of connectivity we have melds all aspects of our lives together. It certainly has its upsides, without being wedded to a desktop we can work from home if we need to.

This brings me back to my fence sitting... I think it’s the new reality for a lot of us to be constantly connected, and to live this state of grey between our work and personal lives. We all as a family adjust to the roles we and technology have to play in making the family work. If answering emails on a smartphone is the compromise that means mum and dad can be home in time for dinner or make it to the school play, perhaps it’s not such a bad thing after all.

But we can’t all be switched on all the time, and perhaps the trade-off for this mad, connected and fast-paced life is that we do need to take those desert island holidays every now and then. To relax, recharge and enjoy a bit of black and white.