Good and bad technology…..

Well, one day out of the barn over at Sourrain’s and I think she already gave me a “BVR bitch slap” ( literally one across the international date line….).I think I’ve either been insulted or insulted her. Oh well, if you are going to go around watching what you say……you will never get anything said! Go get on the plane!^-^

The quizzes are rigged by the way…..

ANYWAY……..

Unlike those who are young and carefree, some of us have to work hard for “the man”. And “the man” was wearing me down today. Today was the invevitable “lessons learned” flail where we put slides together to show the powers that be what we should have done differently if we had just known what we were getting into before we got here.

And people don’t understand why US postal clerks “go postal” and gun down and a whole post office full of people………..I had a couple of deserving candidates in my sights today!

The lesson here is too much technology can be a bad thing. This week I’ve been involved in the technical details of a project that will allow people to work in a “virtual office” distributed between key places in the Pacific. Here in Hawaii I was with people who had cell phones on their waist, next to a crackberryblackberry. As for the video teleconference, well don’t get me started!

Do you ever wonder if this rash of instant communication is such a good thing? Now mind you, I’m not anti progress, but I wonder if we are giving senior leadership too much information and so, inviting them to micro manage. Whatever happened to the days of yesteryear, where the fate of entire nations rose or fell, based on the intuition of some young Major…Possibly nursing a hangover while he made the decision? In some cases it seems to me that may be a better alternative.

I’m not anti-technology at all, but it seems to me that too many decisions this days are pushed higher and higher and the decision makers involved have less and less time to understand the issue in play and make a decision. So the decision increasingly rests on who can package it the best.

I often wonder if I could, if I could go back in time and remove one item of technology. If it were me, it would be the video teleconference. I hate them! If one wants a meeting, give me a plane ticket, a nice location and drinks at the bar at the end of the day. That’s where the real business gets done anyway. Now with VTC’s, there are less and less problems solved on bar napkins. To our detriment I think.

So, what say you? If you could turn back the clock on one item of today’s technology, what would it be?

(cross posted to exordinarily ordinary)

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