Can Technology Separate Work Life From Personal?
from the not-quite-that-intelligent dept
A very interesting opinion piece talking about the separation of work life from personal life and wondering if technology can help to differentiate the two. Normally, people blame technology for blurring the two, but maybe it’s time to see if technology can be molded the other way. The “problem” is that technology keeps us always connected – so it’s hard to let go. You have laptops and pagers and smart phones that all let you stay connected away from the office. So, David Berlind is wondering if technology can be made intelligent enough to distinguish what mode your in and respond accordingly. While it is sometimes nice to be able to receive email on a pager, it can become overwhelming. Plus, what if you want to receive personal emails on the pager, but not work emails at certain times. For example, over the weekend you don’t want to receive work related email, but still should receive personal emails. At the same time, if there really is important news coming from work, you still want to see that. So, the system would need to be smart enough to understand (a) what mode you’re in and (b) whether or not the particular message is important enough to go across one mode into the other. It’s an interesting idea that I haven’t seen discussed anywhere else, but makes a lot of sense. One of the nice things about technology is that (in theory) we have the power to make it do what we want. If that technology seems to be taking over our lives, then why not reprogram the technology to not take over our lives?
