In the world of sports, a fairly significant trade of professional hockey players was overturned when the deal had not been consummated because the league official had his cell phone turned off when one of the teams tried to reach him at the trade deadline. Over half complained of this at least once or twice a week, and more than one in four said it occurred on a daily basis. Most report that they are under much more stress now than five or 10 years ago. I'm sure we all have our theories and ideas to help explain these phenomena, but we would be silly to underestimate the role of computers and technology in their making. Technology has seriously accelerated and in many instances taken control of the pace of our lives.
More technology leads to more stress.
To make matters worse, when it's time to relax and get away from the e-mails, faxes and voice mails of the office, we find our solace by planting ourselves with remote controls in front of our home technology. And as the gap dwindles between office technology and home technology, so will our opportunities to escape. And while we're going there, let's face up to another thing. Today's technology isn't pretty. The background humming of bad lighting, fans and hard disk drives adds to the mix.