Information Technology Reference
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responsibilities. Likewise, rising work hours and inequality have also adopted the work-always ethos of
the current epoch, which is both facilitated by and drives demand for ever-faster telecommunications
technologies.
Is it possible or even desirable to return to a less connected lifestyle in which people really
give each other their undivided attention?
Desirable is in the eye of the beholder. We can always make a conscious choice to drop out, tune in,
and so on. And you can already see a backlash in the popular culture in the form of the slow-food,
slow-living movement. However, you can never go home again, as the saying goes, because even if you
make efforts to regulate your own attention and usage of technologies, you are doing so on a shifted
playing field, fighting intense forces that didn't exist to the same degree in earlier times.
Okay, so there's no going back. What's the best way to move forward?
There are many great aspects of this networked world of “weisure” (a portmanteau that combines work
and leisure in this blurred lifestyle). If we are lucky enough to be a member of the Elsewhere Class, we
can telecommute when our kids are home sick. We can use our iPhone to locate a farmers' market in
a strange city in which we find ourselves on a business trip. And work has become more fun for this
class. More and more of us find not just our calling—our identity—from our work; many of us also
find pleasure and joy in the rhythm of our weisurely lives where we are needed and connected. So my
advice is not to pine for a nostalgic past of uninterrupted family dinners and beach vacations. The most
successful (and fulfilled) firms and individuals are going to be the ones who bend and blend rather than
erect rigid modernist boundaries between the spheres of life. That might mean de-emphasizing “face
time” if tasks can be done on Skype. Or it could mean providing on-site day care. Or laundry rooms
and gyms at the office (as Google does). Employees find that more convenient, and employers get more
productive workers whose other tasks don't get in the way of their work in the knowledge economy.
