I'm continuing a thread started in Media Free? That's easy...and scary. Know why? (Part 1). You can find the entire thread under the MediaFree and Gridless tag. As that tag implies, I'm pondering if it's true that people have a hard time unplugging and getting off the grid. Part 1 mentioned several blog posts that caught my eye and lead to this thread. Part 2 linked announcing going off the grid with asking someone to watch your house while you're away and Part 3 provided some hints as to why some people can get off the grid more easily than others. Part 4 had me wondering why popular culture suggests that taking time for ones' self is an undesirable activity and Part 5 listed some things we've documented in our research.
Part 6 dealt with SIMM behavior and why some cultures have no problem unplugging (if they even plug in as people in the US think of it). Parts 7a and 7b were contributed by one of our researchers and dealt with Emailless Fridays. I started wrapping things up in Part 8 by suggesting that going gridless might offend some people. We continue from there.
Let's reverse the suggestion in the previous post in this arc, that person B might be offended if you were to publicly state some person A had more value in your life because, once gridless, you extend the extra effort to contact A and not B.The reverse is that people will have to exert additional effort to contact you if you're off the grid.
Oh-oh.
Then...if they don't contact you...if you're not on the grid and they don't or aren't willing to exert that extra effort...?
Then really, Ouch!
And we're not even talking about people who go semi-gridless; they let calls go to voicemail and don't get their emails for days on end. What a horrible statement to make about the value of others in your life; You don't immediately respond to them because they're them.
Wait a second. I might be in that category. I can go weeks without responding to emails when I'm busy researching. I'll shut off my phones so as not to be disturbed for days at a time. Then again, I'm not stating someone else is in a definite person B category, only that I'm person A and right now I'm demanding all my attention.
(we're back to solipsism, I think)
(more to follow)
Please contact NextStage for information regarding presentations and trainings on this and other topics.
Links for this post:
- The Curse of Social Networks
- Email Bankruptcy blog posts
- The Eventing Yourself Blog arc
- Going Off the Grid
- The MediaFree and Gridless arc
- MediaFreeZones
- Proof I'm a Luddite
- Unplugging... why is it so hard?
- Voluntary Simplification blog posts
- IMedia Brand Summit on 9-12 Sept 07
- XChange on 20-21 Sept 07
- DC Emetrics Summit on 14-17 Oct '07
- Society for New Communications Research Annual Research Symposium & Awards Gala on 5-6 Dec 07 in Boston.
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