I got this in the email recently.
Dear Najah Nasseri,A recent New Straits Times article stated that "if an average KL worker spends 1.5 hours a day stuck on the road, he loses RM 4,320 a year. Multiply that by 100,000 people and we lose RM 432 million!!"
Advances in mobility technologies today can help us beat the jam with alternative ways of working. It means that employees, customers and business partners are enabled to increase the effectiveness with which they interact to deliver greater value to enterprises. We also see a convergence in communication technologies and applications. With these changes comes a need to understand how new tools can be used in ways to bring true benefits for your organizations.
I thought about it, and if I were stuck in a jam, the last thing I would do is want to do work beyond talking on the phone. I also can't help but think, given the frame of mind that I would be in, would I really be able to concentrate on what I'm doing, even if I'm able to conference with someone in Hong Kong while replying to my boss' email while pulling up the presentation slides for the briefing that I'm late for because of the jam?
Advances in technology of course has [cliche] changed the way we do business [/cliche]. But do we really want to wipe out every single unoccupied second of our waking time by making sure that anyone and everyone can get to us?
There was a period in my career when my phone didn't stop ringing, when it was crucial for me to be connected to my email, and when my mobile number, house number in KL and JB number was a vital piece of information to people at work (I recall a ridiculously timed call I had on the eve of a very big family occasion). When I changed jobs, the phone stopped ringing and my emails were more spam than SOS-es and I learned that silence, even in terms of online communication, was deafening.
Until I got used it.
Having time to reflect, I realised that being 'on' and 'accessible' cramped into my time management. I no longer had boundaries between my time and company time. It was exhilarating for awhile, but I also noticed that I couldn't give as much attention to the tasks at hand as I could have if I wasn't so overstretched.
Work hasn't gone to that point since, and I'm hoping it doesn't for a long time. But one thing I've learned is that connectivity and mobility should have its boundaries, one that recognises a person's need for a bit of quiet downtime.
Maybe I won't join them for "this event to understand how companies are striving to build the mobile enterprise by leveraging technologies such as wireless LANs and remote access services" after all...
Posted by Najah Nasseri at 2004年05月07日 19:24 | TrackBackLoL. On a minor related note, read my post on semacodes, and how it can really push ubiquitous computing to the fore front. With GPRS and other mobile networking techs, these little graphics may be the next thing in advertising (for starters) and who knows where it'll go?
The day might come when we have no choice BUT to be connected. How fascinating.
Posted by: Ash.ox at 2004年05月07日 19:48can't wait till the day we can teleport from one place to the next. Beam me up scotty...
Posted by: Sharizal Shaarani at 2004年05月07日 20:06Wat abt working fm home? Has tis being acceptable in M'sia? My boss is ok wit tis idea...
Posted by: kijal at 2004年05月07日 22:16For me, LAN is part of my name, WAP is when water evaporates, Bluetooth - no my teeth are off white. Haven't understood high tech communication, an 8bit duplex phone works fine. I thought when a company gave you a cell phone it is because you're not efficient during your 8 hour shift. Working at home is oxymoron. I'm very slow.
Posted by: rhomer at 2004年05月08日 00:35One day we'll have chips inplanted in our brains to send and receive calls. You can just imagine people banging their heads against the wall cos of patchy transmission...
"Hello?" *BANG!* "Hello? Can hear now ah?" *BANG!* "Signal not so good lah!" *BANG!* *BANG!*
and to think that there are actually natives in South America who walk around in their birthday suits and have never even seen a normal telephone, let alone heard of bluetooth, WAP or gprs !
Posted by: ted at 2004年05月08日 23:20what about that 1.5 hours of ....
- laying around in bed doing nuthing?
- gossiping about nuthing important in particular
- window shopping
- driving slowly because we have ample of time(causing a back crawl because we refuse to move to slow lane)
at least hitz.fm or mix.fm are making money when others listening to them while stuck in traffic.
and more fuel burnt for the benefit of petronas, shell ,etc...
more roads to be built to ease the traffic congestion - good for construction companies..
the list goes on and on and on...
Posted by: e0ne at 2004年05月09日 12:40What's so bad with laying around in bed doing nothing? I personally kinda like it (although honestly it's been ages since I did it) :P
Mmmmm. Still, I don't think I could do nothing nowadays even if I wanted to...
Posted by: Ash.ox at 2004年05月09日 19:46Working from home can be dangerous. You find yourself clocking more and more hours as I did. I think we can become complacent and inefficient when we know we can stretch timelines.
p/s great website :)
Posted by: theroadie at 2004年05月09日 23:06tech advances with time, and with time passing by the more our dependencies on the techies.
Remember those days when we contented with only the phone on our table, and now u totally p*ssed-off because u dont know where the h*ll are your friends whereabouts in klcc because u forget to charge ur handphone and there's no way u r going to call them on the public phone because u forget their numbers?.. ARRGGHHH!
sad but true