Jabbering away on your mobile while in company is not just bad manners, says an article in the Sunday Times (UK) today, but a symptom of wider malaise.
These are symptoms of OMD, obsessive mobile disorder, and the dread disease CPA, continuous partial attention, in which victims come to believe that life via mobile might be more interesting than life right in front of them.
The article tells the story of Adam Ward, a 24-year-old postgraduate student from London, who was afflicted recently when he started going out with a new girlfriend. “Yep, it’s true,” he said. “We went out on a date and I decided to update my friends every few minutes about how it was going.”
Using his Blackberry, Ward regularly posted his thoughts and observations to his Twitter account as the evening progressed. Didn’t his date notice or object? “Nobody knows you are Twittering, you could just be writing a text,” he said, as if the latter were normal romantic behaviour. “And to be honest, I’m pretty much on my phone every few minutes anyway.”*
As phones offering calls, texts, e-mails, internet and more proliferate, OMD and CPA are spreading like flu. “When I first got the phone, people were really annoyed,” said Ward. “I’d be sitting at dinner and it would keep going off. I had to put it on silent because even if it was on vibrate it was annoying for others.
But as more people get them, they’re not so bothered. It’s becoming the norm – “sorry, can you hold a minute, someone’s messaging me.” It is only when you are repeatedly on the receiving end of OMD or CPA that you begin to understand how infuriating it can be.
Read the complete article here: Can’t Talk, I’m on the Phone
* In case you’re wondering how Adam’s date worked out … despite his constant attention to his Blackberry, apparently they did make a connection. In the morning he Tweeted: “Success!”
The Competitive Enterprise Institute is promoting “Human Achievement Hour” between 8:30pm and 9:30pm tonight to coincide with Earth Hour, in order to “salute the people who keep the lights on and produce the energy that helps make human achievement possible.”
While I don’t agree that Earth Hour is “anti-man and anti-innovation,” as CEIs website claims, I do think the video is a great reminder of the potential of human achievement. And I also believe that the kind of innovation displayed in the video can surely lead to a more energy efficient and environmentally secure future.
And that should have us all energized.
The GreenTech section of cnet news today puts a tech spin on Earth Hour, when individuals, businesses and even cities are being encouraged to join together to “Save a Watt and the Earth.”
They describe Earth Hour as “sort of like open source movement against global warming.” Adding that tomorrow (Saturday, March 28) at 8:30 P.M. millions of people in thousands of cities will turn off the lights for one hour to raise awareness about the link between global warming and energy use.
One day before the start of the event in Asia, “Earth Hour” is the top search item on Twitter.
If you’re planning on participating in Earth Hour tomorrow, you may want to start before you leave the office today. A study published this week calculated that $2.8 billion is wasted from office PCs that aren’t shut off properly.
Tech/Venture News
