Hyperconnection!! Arggh this changes everything.. for me anyway
Posted by Lauren O Grady on October 7, 2008
So I have just got back from ACEC2008 in Canberra and met up with many amazing people behind the pixels. Sometimes you just have to reflect what a wonderful job you have. I have been given the opportunity to meet so many fantastic minds over the past 4 months.
Now organising such connections once upon a time may have been difficult but due to my state of Hyperconnectedness I am now able to be available and in contact at all times. Through applications such as twitter and tools such as the iphone connections are becoming simpler by the day. These tools and applications have changed my work and personal life, I meet amazing people through this and have become very used to hyperconnection being a part of my life. During the conference I was able work out where people were and catch up whilst also staying connected to those I missed back in Melbourne, it was great.
Now for someone like me this is great but what about everyone else around me? What effect does this hyperconnection have on our relationships, work life and balance?
I was up in Sydney not too long ago and someone said to me ” Do you ever disconnect?” and I didn’t really think about it because their opinion was not of much worth at the time, I just laughed and said “no”. Then as sometimes happens the world sent me the same message again last night, this time from someone whose opinion I admire and respect. They spoke from the heart about the effect it has and I tell you it really hit home. I put myself in their shoes (this is a unusual thing for me I recommend it highly) and thought about how I would feel if the situation was reversed. I would be annoyed and feeling very left out.
This time I took it on board, I not only took it on board I decided to take some action.
Sometime all of us geeks and hyperconnected beings need a reminder that people always come before technology and today is my reflection on this. I thought I would write about it because I know through conversations that I am not the only one out there that has been guilty of neglecting friends, family and people you care about for a more passive option of engaging with a machine or checking your tweets or reading your rss feeds. The choice of course really shouldnt even happen but we justify it to oursleves saying that they people will always be there but the lastest information wont be. Well I am quickly realising that there will always be new information and I need to remember that there are amazing people out there if I turn my iphone off and allow them to interact with me.
Ariel from 52 nights unplugged reflects on this hyperconnection as well. She has decided to unplug one night a week for a year and of course as us hyperconnected beings do she has decided to blog about it. Her reflections are raw and real and are inspiring me to switch off more frequently than I do.
This hyperconnection also makes me think of how it will affect students who live with this hyperconnectivity without the people who are real enough to pull them up on it and make them reflect on their practices.
So this was just a short rambled reflection on how hyperconnection has amazing benefits but as with all benefits in life there is also a cost and I ask all readers to reflect and think about the costs with hyperconnection.
To the person who was insightful enough to pull me up on it, thank you, I love learning and this is a great example of how sometimes the best learning experiences are not always what we want to hear.
Comments????
I would love to hear your hyperconnection stories and what you do to disconnect…..
October 7th, 2008 at 11:13 pm
Hi, my name’s Darcy and I’m an addict (not as bad as you though ;-).
For over a decade I have been logging on every night to the World Wide Web and despairing whenever on holidays or away from my ‘pute/online access. That was until the spread of cheap(ish) wireless and cheaper laptops made a travelling/holiday ‘not as bad’. Now I have an iPhone and a 5GB download data allowance, I am truly ‘hyperconnected’ and loving it!
I always had my nose in a book (from 5 onwards) and as a bit of an insomniac tended spend lots of time alone reading. Pretty much the same now ‘cept someone might reply, often the author of what I am reading.
I don’t smoke or spend time at the pub and tend to be with my family in body (if not always spirit) but all ‘my girls’ know when to sort me out to get off the computer: “Dad, we mean now!”
Yes, like most things in life there are +’s and -’s but for me being hyperconnected has many more positives than anything else.
October 7th, 2008 at 11:17 pm
In all seriousness, we all need time away. I like how Lawrence Lessig has a month offline each year:
http://www.lessig.org/blog/2008/05/lessig_blog_closed_until_june.html
October 8th, 2008 at 1:02 am
Yay - does that mean you will be able to spend some family time with us - after all you did invent the saying “nothing says togetherness like shopping” and I don’t mean on line shopping!!
October 8th, 2008 at 6:02 am
I think that is one reason that my phone doesn’t have internet capabilities because I know I would be rude to the real people in my life and I don’t want to do that. I have had a friend who constantly uses her cell phone to call or talk to people when we visit and I find it extremely annoying. I want to say that we’ll come back when we are as important as the people she is talking to on the phone. One way that I disconnect is to go hiking once a week, garden at least an hour a day, and my husband and I walk about four miles a day together. It helps clear my thoughts and reenergize because staying connected can sometimes suck the life out of you!
Thanks for sharing your thoughts.
October 11th, 2008 at 9:45 pm
I did a pull back a few months ago and am feeling life is balanced now. I don’t Twitter or check email when I’m with other people because I feel that I owe it to them (and the experience) to be fully present. I do live Flickr on some occasions, but make it less of an interruption than a celebration of the moment.
October 20th, 2008 at 3:50 am
I think for me there are a few different reasons I’m full on connected all the time
- I don’t have the same variety and depth of friendships online as I do offline
- I think that to continue to encourage diversity online we need to spend not only convincing each other of the benefits of all this stuff but also show lots of other people in our communities who might not be connected
- I still think that there is a limit to the impact your online time can have on your offline time and it’s important to me to ensure that I’m connected for a reason, that it’s actually helping me
Yeah so I guess I think the balance makes both worlds richer. However I haven’t really stepped foot into 2nd life or anything gamey like that - so maybe my mind will change.
October 20th, 2008 at 6:25 am
[...] act between actual life and online life, I quoted Lauren O’Grady in her blogpost “Hyperconnection!! Arggh this changes everything.. for me anyway” where she talks about a time when a friend made her realise how much her hyperconnectedness [...]
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