There’s lots of media coverage this week of smart phones – iPhone for the continuing saga of the iPhone 4, and Blackberry for the UAE’s refusal to use them based on security concerns.
In the interest of full disclosure, I should come-clean now on the fact that I came late to the smart phone party. I had a perfectly good cell phone, and no one was able to convince me that a smart phone would make my life any easier. In fact – quite the opposite:
“You need a smart phone so you can get your email anywhere, and always be connected. The only thing I don’t like is that my phone reception is not very good.”
Sorry – that’s at least two strikes against the smart phone
1) I don’t want to always be connected. In fact I look to actively be disconnected
2) Why would I buy a phone with the limiting function being the telephone itself? It might make a mean frappuccino, but I would prefer it to make phone calls.
I finally relented and bought an iPhone because it effectively condensed four devices I regularly carried on business trips into one (phone, iPod, Palm Pilot & GPS). The bonus feature was that as a middle-aged white guy, I instantly felt cooler with a gadget from Apple.
So once I had the new smart phone was I perpetually connected, as I feared? No.
Not because the technology limited me in any way from staying connected, but because I often either ignored it or turned it off. I am able to do so because I’m not part of a big corporate food-chain where I would be lead to believe that my very existence on the planet is contingent upon me being absolutely indispensible to my employer.
As a contractor of services, I am generally exempt from things like anxiety about job security (because I don’t have any). But it got me thinking about why people feel they need to be connected all the time. It is nothing more than illusions of grandeur if you think that no one else can do what you do. If you are one of the few that has made yourself indispensible then your business is not sustainable, and we should probably fire you anyway.
Either way, if you’re one of those managers that is constantly connected to your workplace, you should work to wean yourself off this addiction. Work, like all other recreational drugs, should be used only in moderation.