Technological burdens

A few days ago, I went out for a walk with my friend.  Because of the outage in the Blackberry network, she left her phone at home.

As we walked and talked and then sought shelter from the rain, she remarked how free she felt without her Blackberry.  She had no idea what sort of messages she missed.  Due to the outage, she couldn't know and didn't have to know and was quite content not knowing.

I wonder how many technological innovations become burdensome to their owners like this.

Initially conceived as a way to make lives easier, to enable us to do what we couldn't do before, they somehow make our lives more difficult and stressful.  For the ability to do something is often quickly followed with the expectation to do it.  If you don't have a smart phone, you can't read and answer email anytime from anywhere.  But if you do have one, not only can you read and answer email from wherever you are, but you are now expected to.  Even if that expectation comes only from yourself, it's something else that draws your attention, something else on your mental to do list, another distraction.

Is it worth it?  I don't know.

But for the time being, I'm not going to try to find out.