Do you ever go further than 20M from your phone?

Does your computer run 24/7?

Do you have 3+ battery powered items in you ‘must have’ list when going on holiday?

Do you give people you mobile number and email when asked for contact details – but never your address or land line number?

Are you under 30?

The link for the day includes this quote…

“This is always the case with new technology. Often the effects are paradoxical… …The overall upside is that we can maintain a rich social and cultural life… The overall downside is that our spiritual development — which requires empty time, contemplation — is suffering enormously.”

This prompted a bit of a debate in our office. The older generation feel this pressure indeed. For example, if they are on holiday, they want to be able to turn their phone off, or even better leave it at home. They go away on holiday to escape. Always having to be in contact stresses them.

Now I’m not sure if its a sign of the changing generation, or if its just that I’m a geek, but I find the opposite. Having to turn my phone off stresses me out – I’m no longer in touch!

Many of the other younger people in the office felt the same. Being in a place that’s out of coverage requires forward planning, telling people where you will be and when you will be back. Arranging to meet people at a fixed time, in a fixed location?

None of this sounds stress reducing to me at all!

But the older generation just couldn’t understand it. They kept coming back to the same question of “but what did you do before you had a phone?”

You can imagine the look on the oldies faces when we answered with “but we have always had a mobile (at least we have for our adult life), or if we didn’t have one, we just made sure we were near someone who did”.

It was only then that the two generations agreed to disagree on this one…

I still don’t know if this is because we are just geeky, or if it really is a sign of the ‘now now now’ nature of our generation? I’ll leave that one up to you.

If you think you know the answer, then TXT me, after all you know I’ll have my phone with me at all times.