VentureBlog: What I Want From The Next Generation of the Web: From Venture Blog. “1. Over the last five to seven years has technology increased or decreased your personal productivity?
2. Increased or decreased your overall quality of life?
3. Strengthened or weakened your interpersonal and family relationships?
My answers are 1. decreased, 2. increased, 3. weakened. In terms of time, technology has been a net negative on my life for quite awhile. Ten years ago, I spent zero time dealing with CC email, SPAM, viruses, blue screens, IP address configurations, cell phone coverage areas, WiFi, Bluetooth compatability, digital media player/media compatibility, DRM restrictions, style sheets, HTML tags, digital photos, hardware compatibility and installation, and a host of other now daily issues. Before email and IM, my messaging cue was manageable. Now there is special software to manage it. 99% of my daily email messages (80% of it spam, the remaining 18% valid mails) don’t actually need immediate attention. Email has added in increased sense of urgency to all messages. I remember when my mother went from writing snail mail and being happy with a two week turn-around to email. She called the day after she sent her first one asking why I hadn’t replied and was I alright? The capacity for immediate response has raised the expectations. I could click through very interesting and engaging web sites 24 hours a day and never get anything else done! With three different IM clients running it is easy to get pulled into multiple impromptu chats that while engaging, may not necessarily be productive in the grand scheme of things. So productivity, overall, a decrease due to the increased ability to message (and randomize) and the increased level expectations on response.”