The Slow Media Movement; multi- vs. mono-tasking...

Consider this - what would you WANT from such a lifestyle?...

Survey Q: If you gave up your cell phone, used just 1 e-mail address for everything, and were online for less than 5hrs per week - what would you want to gain from that?

It seems to me that it isn't really anti-technology, rather it's a re-emphasis of using technology for a clear and compelling benefit to yourself first instead of using technology for it's own sake or even fearing experiences of not using it (e.g. NOT checking/responding to your e-mail within 30seconds after it's been recieved - oh, the HORROR!

So...what would you want out of such a lifestyle? hmmm...

If my office went back to email being a once a day thing like physical mail I would have a hell of a lot more voice-mails to deal with. Clients and consultants still need to communicate and if they aren;t going to get a response via email they would just pick up the phone. That's a huge step backwards because then I must listen to, transcribe and respond to each one. Text is a much more efficient medium for conveying business information because once you send it I have a copy and can refer to it later. There is nothing that irritates me more than someone who calls ands leaves an overly lengthy and complex voicemail that I must parse and document as opposed to just putting it in writing so there is a searchable record on our exchange server.

Before widespread adoption of email and FTP my business wasted huge amounts of paper and spent an enormous amount of time and money printing and fed-exing documents. The last hour or two of the day was often spent preparing documents instead of actually working on them. Now I can work up to the wire, print it to PDF and email or upload it.

Rarely do I feel technology is an intrusion on my life.

not technology. If you are answering emails and phone calls in the middle of the night from work... when your job does not require it, then you are making yourself too available and, of course, people will start to take advantage of that. Either this guy needs to learn when to take off his work hat or he needs to learn how to be helpful without being a doormat.

And you can set boundaries without turning throwing out technology wholesale. Everyone in the world does not need to have your cell phone number and you can still and answer that email tomorrow instead of tonight when you are out at dinner with friends or your significant other.

There is also a type of person that uses technology as a weapon to make themselves look important. You know the ones I'm sure. They send random unimportant emails at 4:30 in the morning or at midnight (and conveniently always copy the bosses on them) that clearly could have waited till later. Or the manager who makes demands of their subordinates at absurd times of the day to show off their power. These people are more concerned about the appearance of being busy than actually getting real work done. They deserve the hell they create for themselves.