CrackBerry: Society's boon or bane?

The wireless handheld device. My wife has one and I have had one in the past so I thought I would write about this innocuous looking technology tool which can be incredibly useful while also being the scourge of our existence. Consider this article today in the New York Times.

The money quote in the article, “You’ll have half the participants BlackBerrying each other as a sub-meeting, with a running commentary on the primary meeting,” Mr. Reines said. “BlackBerrys have become like cartoon thought bubbles.”

This is a senior advisor to Secretary of State Hilary Rodham Clinton making this comment so the problem even pervades at high level meetings in the White House.

Recently Research in Motion or RIM, the company which makes the BlackBerry, reported a better-than-expected 33 percent jump in first-quarter profit. They also reported that a substantial amount of new customers were non-corporate customers. People are snapping up this tool as the need for immediacy in connecting with others grows at an alarming rate. With this growth comes the concomitant decline in civility and appropriate behavior. No longer does an important business or cabinet meeting hold the attention of participants, but rather a tiny screen does, one which makes the owner feel important and sought after, no matter how mundane the information sent or received may be.

We have opposable thumbs. This sets us apart from all other animals, and now we have come full circle and realized their true purpose, to text others. The only horror story I have not heard so far (which does not mean it has not happened) is that of a truly ill patient entrusting their innermost thoughts to their psycho-therapist while laying on the couch, only to find out that the therapist has not heard a word due to sending and receiving emails on his/her handheld device.

I mention BlackBerry because it is the dominant player in the market, but in reality any form of texting/emailing/gaming/etal while at a meeting, at the dinner table or any other instance where your attention should be elsewhere is the beginning of the decline of Western civilization. And it is happening as you are reading this.