Sure, they make me more efficient. But they also make me work all the time. It hit me hard the other day while I was on the treadmill, trying to get some much-needed exercise. In it, author Richard Swenson notes that the average person must learn to operate 20,000 devices and that genuine leisure time available in a society is generally inversely proportional to the amount of labor-saving machinery it employs. On the ledge where I rested Swenson's book as I worked out, I had placed my cell phone, so I wouldn't miss a call, and my pager.
Nobody needs to be that connected.
And we are always being interrupted by incoming messages, which, truth told, can always wait. But we both drop whatever we're doing and rush to see who sent what. We went on vacation to Hawaii a couple of years ago. I took along my laptop and signed up for an account with the Internet provider on Kauai so, at least twice a day, I could check and respond to e-mail. I'm not alone.