The Personal Digital Assistant (PDA) is a technological phenomenon that is changing how Americans work. From Palm Pilots to Blackberrys to iPhones, PDA’s are breaking the barriers between office and home in novel ways.
According to a recent survey conducted by Studylogic LLC,
85% of respondents say that PDA’s and cell phones allow them to spend more time out of the office and 79% believe they can be just as productive outside of the office as opposed to inside the office. 84% of people feel that technology gives them more quality time and flexibility with family and friends and 77% say their PDA helps them enjoy life more.
If these numbers are representative of the population as a whole, then perhaps what we are seeing is less of a trend and more of a sign of how work will evolve in the future. And, if the next nine decades are anything like the first, then history will remember the 21st Century as the Age of Domestication…
Enter 2000 CE. With the dawn of a new millennium there came too the rise of the internet and the personal computer. Combined, these both allowed for a new kind of social interaction: instant messaging, e-mailing, blogging. Communication never felt so interactive, interaction never so easy. What critics hated, advocates loved: all of these activities could be done in your pajamas, while eating munchies, and channel surfing. For better or for worse, social interaction was quickly moving indoors and technology was clearly to blame.
Is it possible that our workplace could be altered in a similar way? Could we be close to a time where the majority of productivity is done from home, with just a day or two dedicated to face to face interaction at the traditional office? While this future is only possible for those jobs whose responsibilities fall within the boundaries of this technological advance, it would nonetheless present itself as major change to the very concept of employment.
Blackberry image courtesy of Travelhouse
12 Comments
Technology could also increase pressure to be even more closely tied to work than ever before. Devices such as BlackBerry’s leave users connected to the office and therefore work 24 hours a day and 7 days a week.
Seriously, I’m checking my work e-mail right now…
Between personal email, school email, work email, blogging, Digg, reddit, StumbleUpon, Furl, online banking, google analytics, adsense, adwords, sports, etc. (I’m sure I missed a few)… have you ever found yourself in an infinite loop of online use where you cannot get away from your computer screen? I have even made a website just for my own personal bookmarks to stroll through my daily internet routine. I can access them anywhere in the world and definitely from my PDA!
Then when you finally get off the computer, you go to lay down in bed and use a PDA to hop back onto the internet.
Great post Andrew! I like it. I think we will see the evolution of telecommuting transform into virtual corporations where all employees work from home.
I left the best stat out of the post…
“…more than one-third of folks surveyed (35%) say if forced to choose, they’d pick their PDA over their spouse!”
PDA’s don’t offer those kind of services to justify that sort of sentiment.
yet…
Its interesting how advances in technology are influencing blue collar and white color jobs so distinctly…
On the white-collar side PDA’s are creating the opportunity for management, etc to become more integrated into their responsibilities.
But on the blue-collar side we keep seeing the risk of jobs being lost to advanced machines (Automated tellers, etc.)
The problem with this new wave of work away from work that the PDA allows is that you will never truly be away from the office. For those that are spastic email checkers they will be sitting at home with the fam and instead of spending time with the fam they are nervously checking their email every 5 minutes to ensure they are not missing anything.
Keep work at work and keep time with the family as far away from work as possible.
I couldn’t agree more TMW. Too often I work in an environment where managers are checking their emails while trying to hold a meeting or conversation.
It really chaps my ass when someone is rude enough to check and respond to their e-mails while in a meeting that they are supposed to be paying attention.
What pisses me off is the boss that sends me email after hours or during time off and then asks why I did not respond. I have had business phones and promptly turn them off on the weekends and at a reasonable time after work. Work is not my life it affords my life but it is not my reason for being.
It appears that even toddlers are getting in on the BlackBerry (r)evolution.
I would feel like I couldn’t keep work and play separate. Your work would always expect you to to respond. You’d be a slave to work. The last thing I would want is to have to read a business email while I’m trying to hang out with my friends or family. They would have to pay me per email.
One Trackback
[...] This past September I babeled on how the majority of American’s believe their quality of life, and their productivity in general, is greatly improved by the use of Personal Digital Assistants. In that post I concluded that we are witnessing the beginning of what will be a radical revolution in what it means to work. [...]