wired.com — Increasing use of e-mail, web apps and online networking might minimize the need for living physically close to our workplaces and social circles. However, studies suggests that far from removing distance barriers, technology actually reinforces the value of proximity and face time.
Jan 21, 2008 View in Crawl 4
gbarberiJan 21, 2008
Wow, this article made me think about my adjustment to communications technology at work. For eight years, I was a Retail Manager in a store and all my interactions with my co-workers were conducted face to face. During my last year there, they had implemented an electronic messaging system for store to store communications (and also for communications to field managers). It was used very rarely. When it was used, it was to send a single message to multiple stores at once. I left two years ago and became an IT associate. Besides having to adjust to sitting at a desk all day, I had to adjust to the way my co-workers communicated. They sent emails to each other (and me), meanwhile being less than ten feet away from one another. Or, they'd call each other's phone extensions. At most, two people would be separated by a two-inch thick wall and several feet of air. It's like a 30 second walk. I started getting creeped out, even upset by it. I found it really impersonal and way too cold to conduct business. It was always professional in my last place of employment with face to face interactions, so this form of communication seemed unnecessary and alien to me.Eventually, I got used to it. I realized that we did it so as not to interrupt each other's workflows. Most of our work is done at the PC console. I cracked jokes about it with some of my co-workers. I even signed off on some of my emails with stuff like "Cheers from the guy three feet to your left." Laughing at it helped. I can see a lot of truth in this article. Yeh, I can email/IM my co-worker real quick. But, if I see that they're not busy, I'll go over to them and have a conversation. If I get a message asking for technical assistance from someone on another floor and I'm not busy, I'll go to them.
digidaveJan 22, 2008Submitter
You want a really funny anecdote: I used to work at Wired. Yup, I worked in their SF office. I started out as an intern and eventually strated freelancing for them. I still go into their office from time to time and the ethos is the exact same: NOBODY TALKS.When I worked there IM was the mode of communication. I would literally IM the guy in the cubicle next to me "I finished this project." It was so funny and yet so "wired."