A night without technology
So the electricity went out in Brier Creek the other night while I was in Barnes and Noble waiting to get my hair cut (I wasn’t actually getting my hair cut IN Barnes & Noble … I was WAITING in B&N).
After a lovely haircut and massage experience at Blo (if you go, see Jenny and tell her I sent you) I went back to B&N to get a gift for my nephew and, while the lights had come back up, the computers were down for the night. No big deal, they rolled with the punch and broke out the old carbon copy receipts to hand write all the transactions. This had two apparent affects:
1. It made me feel my age. The girl who wrote up my receipt was so young that she had never seen one of these hand-written receipts and she had a very tough time calculating the tax on my purchase (but that’s another subject).
2. For some odd reason, this lack of technology (it didn’t only affect the registers, you couldn’t listen to CDs at the listening station and there were some limitations at the Starbucks counter too … not sure why … in any case…) ... this lack of technology seemed to make people a bit more talkative and social… and I don’t really know why … can’t put my finger on it.
It may have something to do with the fact that it slowed down the transaction times, so instead of standing at the counter for the average 30 seconds, you ended up standing there for maybe 2 minutes. You felt obliged to make more than small talk to the girl behind the counter. Also, I guess there was less distraction (no listening stations, no computers to search for a book on).
Regardless of the reason, it got me thinking about how technology has affected us and continues to do so. Is it making us less social (at least in a face-to-face capacity … because you CAN argue the opposite in that that sites like myspace.com, email in general, and yes, even blogging have empowered us to communicate more efficiently)? Are we all slowly becoming that quiet computer geek who has a hard time looking their coworkers in the eye, while secretly alone at home they’re ranting and raving about all types of social issues online?
I have no conclusion, but will surely keep thinking about this. Any thoughts?
Tony Poillucci is Vice President (Head Coach) at VisionPoint Marketing. His primary focus is on leading strategy, user experience and creative efforts. He's fascinated by complex systems including group dynamics (building a balanced team), the cultures within organizations (creating raving fans) and devising tailored, successful strategies (situational game planning). He also has an uncanny ability to work football analogies into almost everything he writes.