Always On?

Last I heard, my elder daughter was in Kathmadu. I know this because we had a very, very brief conversation via the almost ubiquitous FaceBook.

The brevity of the chat wasn’t a result of having nothing to say, or of us being mad at each other – it was purely and simply down to the fact that her internet connection suffered from one of the series of rolling blackouts they have there.

Needless to say, I left a message. The gist of this message was “We’re getting pretty frustrated with only getting two minutes of chat and not knowing what’s going on in your life: why don’t you send us an email?”

Now, before you read the next bit, you need to know that my daughter’s not stupid. She’s doing a medical degree and doing pretty well at it…. but she’s a child of her times…

Daughter: I can’t send you an email, it takes as long to type as a conversation

Me: But your laptop has batteries, so you could write your email on that, ready to go when you have you ‘net connection/electricity back

Daughter: What do you mean?

Me: Exactly that – write your email on your computer and then just copy/paste it into your emailer when you’ve got a connection. That way you only need to be online for a minute to send, not 20 minutes to type

Daughter: WTF? Write it when I’m not online? Wow. Never realised you could do that!

Like I said, you have to remember that she’s not stupid – honestly…

It’s just that, as a child of her time she’s been brought up with the idea of being constantly online. Her whole mindset is online/now/interactive/live.

How far we’ve come from the idea of dial-up. Or, heaven help us, a culture where there was a concept of ‘offline’.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not complaining – I get pretty annoyed if I discover the cafe I’m using doesn’t offer (free!) wifi – but it’s a trend that we might like to stop and consider for a moment.

Take an experience I had on holiday in Italy last week. I sat at a table, chatting to my wife (A Saint!) while at the table next to us, four girls all sat, busily chatting on their phones… and not to each other, but to people who weren’t there. Far from considering it rude to ignore each other’s physical presence, they considered it rude to ignore someone else’s virtual presence!

Simon Raybould is one of the country's most widely read and regarded providers of voice and presentation skills training.