The Good, the Bad …
If you are old enough to remember when the fella pictured was new (and so maybe funny); if you remember trains before quiet-coaches were a thing; if you remember when change was a physical-item (not a belief-system) and a mobile was something that hung over a cot … Then maybe this will make some sense?
The place where I am currently contracted recently made the decision to get “those employees who required one” a work mobile (rather than pay them to use their own).
When asked – and don’t get the wrong idea, I’m not an influencer where I work, as far as I know – I supported the additional expense. Not because staff were out of pocket; or because securing company assets would be easier to do … But because you can switch it off when you leave the office and still take calls from your Gran (family/friends/phone company/stalkers/wrong-numbers <– Delete as appropriate) … On your own phone.
Back when Dom Joly was making a living taking the mickey out of the handful of “suits” who stood in train corridors and shouted into the brick in their hand, work pretty much stopped when you left the office. I don’t think that started to change because more productivity was needed; because of the Internet, cheap notebooks, tablets, Skype, SnapChat or Twitter … It changed because of mobile phones.
And it wasn’t just work … About the only thing I can think of that has (arguably) been more disruptive in the last century, would be the auto-mobile.
Disruption isn’t ever – Sometimes Never – just a bad thing
Once upon a time (about a decade ago) I coached at a football club (the round ball variety). At the end of the season we dragged those senior players who wanted to go away on a weekend-long camping trip. First night we to the local pub for a meal and drinks.
Meal finished we all sat at a series of long tables. Sipping beer and chatting. I was sat with a group of lads who also remember the fella pictured at the top of this. In a quiet moment I glanced about the rest of the room …
Apart from three or four of us, the rest of the squad was eighteen to mid-twenty year-olds. They too were sat at long tables – sipping beer and chatting to one another – virtually everyone had a connected mobile phone in their hand. I slid over to sit with a few of them … From what I could see they were all on a chat-app (Whatsapp, or whatever, I don’t remember which) … I asked who they were chatting with?
“Mates”
Why not chat with your mates who are here?
“We are. They’re all on here too”
Back when Dom Jolly was making that living, you couldn’t do that. You were only with the people who you were with.
Is this a bad thing?
I didn’t – still don’t – think so. I was a little amazed by it. A little … envious isn’t quite the right word … that they could include people outside of their current environment – but inside their circle of friends – in an experience they would otherwise have missed.
I am still a little puzzled by someone who thinks the choice to do this is only ever a bad thing.
Is that what you call yourself?
That was said to me much more recently. By someone whose thoughts I value. When I figured what she meant I was even more surprised than by the group of footballers above
She wanted to Airdrop something to my phone …
“I can’t find you?”
Eh? … Oh, it’s XXX XXX
The name of my device isn’t my name … The expectation that it surely must be was quite something to think about
How personal these devices are considered to be … More than belonging to … Sometimes at least, more like an extention of you. Again, unlike almost anything else I can think of …
Maybe … if someone is old enough to remember that funny man and his oversized phone … Any disquiet that is felt is only a product of the thing in question and not the social or emotional reasoning behind it all?