Our changing view of connectivity

A quarter century ago, in 1983, when I was 30 years old, I was "senior news supervisor" at the Mutual Broadcasting System. It meant managing editor except for (a) a lower salary, and (b) lots of second-guessing by higher layers of management. But it was a challenging and exciting job, organizing coverage of great world events on a shoestring budget. I had to carry a Metrocall pager. All the time. People who carried pagers in those days referred to them as electronic leashes. And for every 50 people who carried pages there was one whose company assigned him a massive Motorola mobile phone. The nickname for this device was "The Brick." I've seen bowling trophies that are smaller.  But the key point is that this level of connectivity was seen as a nuisance. In 1984 I was laid off from Mutual and went to UPI as one of the morning newscasters, and one of the things I liked best about getting out of management was giving up the pager. Until recently there were two kinds of people on the subject of connectivity. Group A consisted of people my age who don't WANT to be reachable everywhere at any time. And Group B consisted of younger adults who grew up with personal cell phones and were used to being in touch with others all the time, for social rather than work-related reasons. Despite being of the electronic leash generation, I understand the latter view. When I was in high school, it felt distinctly unpleasant to be out of touch with my friends, wondering if others were having fun while I was home watching "The Man From UNCLE." The more I knew about what was going on in my world, the more content I was. That feeling came back to me seven years ago when I was at Kahala Mall and saw a group of six teenaged girls. Four of them were talking on cell phones to friends in other places and none of them were talking to each other. Clearly this was a generation that not only did not resent being in touch, but obsessively kept in touch. As for Group A, we've been changing our view of these things. Once we prided ourselves on being out of touch on vacations. But we work harder every year, and part of work, part of almost everyone's work, is email. We like to find an Internet cafe on vacation if only to delete all the spam. It's like keeping your desk clean while you're away. It's a worthwhile investment of time to enjoy the rest of your vacation, knowing that when you come back you can hit the ground running without much stress. All this comes to mind as cell phone networks become wireless broadband networks that offer computer connectivity as well as telephone service. Bill Jarvis of Mobi PCS is convinced that we're just a few years from everyone having his own personal wireless connectivity account and I think he's right. For different reasons, everyone feels the need to stay in touch.