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October 15, 2006
Jeff Pulver: “On Being Plugged In: 2006 Edition”
I feel most productive when I am connected to the Net. And I don't just mean in the "getting things done" way, but being in sync with the emails and blogs of my friends, family, business associates and the ability to just know what is going on around the internet at any given moment. Being connected gives me a rush that I never want to have taken away. While "no man is an island," when I am by myself, but connected to the net, I feel much better then when I am in meetings all day but otherwise offline. This in turn creates an ongoing conflict for me in how to best spend my time when I have the choice to either be in meetings or spending time online and connected.
Given the choice, I prefer simple lightweight clients over anything else. For me, a blackberry/PDA is a great device to scan incoming email but I prefer to respond to email using PINE on my laptop. Just give me a Wi-Fi enabled PC and let me get to my email and I'm one happy camper. At the moment while I have multiple IM identities, I am using none of them. I use both email and SMS as my “IM” clients of choice due to their ubiquitous nature. And getting that “connected feeling” can take place just about anywhere -- whether it is lying in bed, sitting in a coffee house or sitting in my seat on an international flight. So the location doesn't matter as long as the connectivity works.
And I do not attempt to address how many hours a day that I am online (“many” on a good day), or whether I am compulsive about email, because I am. I do wonder how much time some of the other members of the Blogosphere spend on Technorati or Blogsearch.google.com looking for references to themselves or their past blog posts. That's perhaps a side-effect of the connected feeling. While every once in a long while I can find myself offline, "disconnected", and proud of it, most of the time it is when I am connected to the net that I am feeling the most productive and feeling my best.
Perhaps somewhere in between lays the correct balance for our "internet metabolism." I like feeling the pulse of the internet. It's not that I'm a workaholic. It's not really about work. (Ok, maybe I am an Internet-holic.) I consider this connectedness to be about the people I care about, people that interest me, friends, and colleagues. I do wonder sometimes how this internet metabolism will be served in the future.
Tags: Technorati, Jeff Pulver
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Posted by jeff on October 15, 2006 09:59 AM | Permalink
Additional resources: Watch PrimeTime TV Shows | Watch the Jeff Pulver Show | Jeff's Qik Videos
Comments
Well, now that Boeing is closing their internet service, airlines will have to have rehab departments for workaholics who will not be able to go online on those long transatlantic flights!
Posted by: Moshe Maeir at October 18, 2006 09:13 AM
Dave, Great Dialog. :)
Posted by: Jeff Pulver at October 15, 2006 04:09 PM
The only danger I've found for myself is that constant connection can rob you of your focus if there's something that requires presence of mind above and beyond the normal background clutter. If there's a task of some kind that requires sole focus, I'll literally unplug everything so that I can get the best results.
Posted by: Christopher S. Penn, PodCamp Co-Founder at October 15, 2006 02:43 PM
I feel the same way. I recently took a few vacations and came up against the 'don't take your computer on vacation' argument.
Being connected to my friends won out.
It's the new postcard home. It's the new phone call from the hotel room. It's the new letter from camp.
That's the way we live.
Posted by: steve garfield at October 15, 2006 01:23 PM
A short film I've been working on at one point contained a scene I wrote inspired by an unpleasant personal experience where I was unable to connect to the internet over the course of an evening.
---
ALEX: (speaking on his cell phone, sympathetic and consoling) Okay man, feel better, alright?... Alright. Bye. (hangs, up, sighs)
MATT: Hey, you alright, man?
ALEX: My brother had a really bad night last night and couldn’t come in to work.
MATT: Ah, I’m sorry to hear that, is he okay?
ALEX: His internet went out at about 1 in the morning…
MATT: …that’s it?
ALEX: (incredulous) that’s it?
MATT: Well, yeah, doesn’t seem so bad. He could go to sleep early and see how it is in the morning.
ALEX: My brother’s been connected basically 24/7 for all through college and a few years before and since. The past 8 years of his life. Do you know what having that and then losing that does to a person?
MATT: Um… could he read a book?
ALEX: That’s not the point, man, he lost something!
MATT: Look I have dial up at home still, so explain it to me.
ALEX: You Luddite… okay. It’s like… You have chairs around your dining room table, right?
MATT: Yes, who doesn’t?
ALEX: Do you always sit in them? I mean like every minute when you’re in your house, all the time?
MATT: No, of course not.
ALEX: But you always can right? You like knowing that you could, if you wanted to, walk into the dining room and sit on one of those chairs.
MATT: I…guess.
ALEX: So it’s the same thing! It’s like somebody walked into your house and stole all your chairs and, sure you can sit on your couch or your bed or on the floor but aren’t you pissed off that you can’t go and sit in your chairs? It’s the potential, it’s the opportunity that he’s had stolen. It’s not so much that he always always is online but if he wanted to, at any moment, he always could be, you see?
MATT: I kind of… kind of see it.
ALEX: The worst part of it is he couldn’t even go online to write in his Livejournal about how bad he was feeling about the whole thing.
---
Long comment short, I understand where you're coming from.
Posted by: David Kowarsky at October 15, 2006 10:43 AM