The price of gadgets...

A recent article in the New York Times did a nice job of illustrating some of the pros, and some of the cons, of being hooked on technology and the price to be paid when the obsession goes too far. When I interview candidates for positions with Pinnacol I sometimes tell them, only somewhat jokingly, that we live and die by our little black boxes (our computers). I suspect that like other companies this is becoming truer with each day, and its not just our desk top computers. Our company culture used to frown on attendees at meetings using their electronic devices; today one can't sit through a meeting in our building without some (sometimes most!) of the participants looking down at their I-Phones and Blackberries, fingers a-blur. Is this good or bad? I don't know the answer, but increasingly there are studies indicating there is a price to be paid for this obsession with technology.

The article points out that people's brains actually change to adapt to the constant flow of information and stimulus provided through all these devices. The stimulation actually causes a dopamine squirt that researchers say can be addictive. Users often claim they need the technology to multitask. The scientific evidence actually points to the opposite - people overly immersed actually have more trouble focusing and ignoring irrelevant information. What I found intriguing is that scientists are finding that even after multitasking ends, fractured thinking and lack of focus persist. As the article points out, its not that this is just your brain on computers, its your brain off computers as well. Its not all bad news however - imaging studies find Internet users become more efficient at finding information and video game players do develop better visual acuity.

Its a fact of life that people today are innundated with information, nearly three times as much as folks were consuming in the '60's. Recent studies found that computer users check e-mail or other programs nearly 37 times an hour and visit an average of 40 web sites a day. On average we are now consuming 12 hours of media a day, compared with 5 hours in the 1960's.

Some people apparently can easily juggle all these information streams. But according to the University of Utah, these "supertaskers" represent less than 3% of the population. For the rest of us its a challenge that can impact every aspect of our life, from work, to home, to school, to relationships with other people. I'm as guilty as anyone; I occasionally catch myself e-mailing folks in the cubicles next to mine rather than simply getting out of my chair and actually talking to them. We are still in the infancy of all this - the hardware and software we are using today will look like child's toys in a decade or two. Pinnacol, as will be the case with all American companies, will be going along for the ride and will have to adapt. It should make for an interesting journey for both our company and our employees!