A Connected World Less Connected

Anytime you walk into a business, it can be an interesting look into human behavior. There are people in meetings, typing on laptops, discussing a new project in the hall, drinking coffee, and maybe even having a laugh or two. It’s a peek into a subsection of society we call work. They say we spent a third of our lives in this space. It appears it's rapidly becoming more. We may not be "at work" but we seem to be spending a larger amount of time working, thinking about work, worrying about work, discussing work.

Our workspace is expanding physically as technology spreads it into homes and airports and has created an almost 24/7 culture where we are checking messages on smartphones at all hours to ensure we don’t miss anything. Instant responses are commonplace and our ability to always stay connected has become the topic of debate.

Need it Now

One hundred years ago, there weren't all these ways to stay in touch yet business was built, careers thrived, and relationships flourished. Media penetration has created the ability for us to connect with someone on the other side of the planet we may not have previously known. The explosion of social tools and electronic collaborative spaces have shrunk the earth to allow us to find like-minded people with the push of a thumb.

168 hours

As we create the appearance of a more connected world, we may be slowly losing the connection to ourselves and soon to each other. Snippets of half conversations, misspelled texts between meetings, skimmed over details of an upcoming project, all in the quest to do more and more and more.

More for less, more meetings, more email, more information, more activity. More everything. The week is the same length it was 200 years ago yet we are inundated with data constantly. This doesn’t mean it’s useful or valuable but it’s more to sift through. And while we try and do more, we may be losing our human connections.

In our quest to collaborate, we may be losing the plot.
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Kneale Mann | People + Priority = Profit

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