News Regarding the Center
The person you called is switched off
Sydney Morning Herald
May 22, 2006
For some, the constant contact offered by a mobile can become an emotional umbilical
cord, and their relationships with their phones can compete with their real
relationships. Sydney organisational psychologist Grant Brecht tells of one couple
who came to see him at the wife's insistence. They had taken a "holiday" together,
only to have the husband bring along two mobile phones and spend at least six hours
a day talking about work on them. "But my wife is my first priority," he told Brecht
in the first session.
What price this noisy revolution, with its demands for everyone to be available
everywhere, at every moment? How do we pay for the convenience of being able to keep
tabs on the kids while we are at work, and tabs on work while we are with the kids?
What is happening to solitude, attentiveness, and the boundaries between the public
and private spheres in the age of mobiles and Blackberries, SMS and email?
One price is a lessening of "down time". James Katz, in his book Mobile
Communication: Private Talk, Public Performance, warns that perpetual contact means:
"Those who treasure respite may find themselves pressured to replace otherwise
excusable isolation with productive tasks. Once, being on board an airplane excused
an executive from having to interact with colleagues. No more, for the fax and phone
even follow at six miles high." Worldwide, he says, more people now own a phone than
a TV.
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