The dance of the bees
By Perry Glasser | April 24, 2008 The Boston Globe
TWO OF my students appeared at my college office door just as I was leaving to meet them. In the hurry of ordinary business, I had been ambiguous as to when and where we'd chat. But a third student, their classmate, was missing. "Where's Steph?" I asked.
Chelsea and Samantha shrugged.
I found Stephanie downstairs waiting at a classroom seminar table. I explained my mix-up. She dropped her cellphone into her pocketbook. "I was expecting a call from Sam or Chel," she said.
I wondered, Why had I walked?
My reflexes no longer fit the times. My students assume constant electronic proximity. They call; I schlep. Like the dance of the bees, they share a hive mentality, the reflexive, instinctive, communication of everything about everybody to everyone at every moment.
Is the ubiquity of cellphones and the Internet fundamentally changing a generation's sense of self? Those of us older than 40 worry about privacy: My Millennial Gen students entering their 20s have little appreciation for that concept. Identities blurring at the edges, they have become a great "us."
The hive mentality is not only ordinary adolescent conformity - it's a corporate necessity. The electronic network flatters every yuppie wannabe with the same delusional lie: You are the hub of a great, ever-changing network. The heavens may wheel, but we remain fixed at the center. What mid-level exec dares vacation without a Blackberry? Suppose the home office reached a decision while you were beyond reach? Suppose a crucial e-mail was sent while you foolishly wasted time with your kids, sat in the sun, or read a book? People need lives, but business requires productivity.
...
Business may require productivity, but unless it's provided by robots, a competent manager will know that humans require downtime in order to remain productive. The children who grew up with cellphones glued to their ears will soon discover that the ultimate and most hard-won privilege is the right to be left alone.
Of course, there's a larger issue: quantity and quality are always on opposite ends of the communications see-saw, and the new generation that mistakes the elevation of quantity for the power of quality will inevitably find that it's a short trip down and a very sudden stop when the guy who concentrated on quality steps off to visit his corner office.
When I first joines New England Telephone, memos from top executives were typed on special versions of the IBM Selectric, by specially trained secretaries, and thus had justified margins and a slightly different font.
Just before I left, twenty-five years later, a top executive circulated a memo on some minor matter, but it was the talk of the office: it was written in longhand.
The hive mentality may require junior workers to be constantly "in touch", but those of us who've been around the block a few times know that the _content_ of a message is more important than it's buzz.
Bill Horne Temporary Moderator
(Please put [Telecom] at the end of the subject line of your post, or I may never see it. Thanks!)