Due to injury and illness, blogging is taking a back seat at the moment…
Apologies and normal service will be resumed as soon as possible…
When novelty becomes necessity
July 1, 2009 By Leave a Comment
When technological advancements such as the printing press, telegraph or the car were invented, it took a while to get going. Even something as simple as sliced bread took a good few years before becoming widely adopted.
And yet the increasing pace of change means what seemed a novelty just a short time ago soon becomes expected.
The free wifi on National Express trains is one case in point.
When it was first introduced, it seemed like a minor miracle that I could now access the internet and get work done whilst travelling, for no extra charge, even in standard class.
But within a couple of years I’m amazed that other trains don’t have it, and I’m immensely frustrated and disappointed that the speed and reliability hasn’t improved. In fact it’s got much, much worse as more and more people are using laptops and netbooks on the train.
Mobile broadband is similar. It took a while for the mobile phone to become widely adopted, but now mobile internet access is becoming a standard and expected part of any new mobile device. And it’s data costs and anything less than 100% access that become the talking points, rather than the fact I can access the web from something in the palm of my hand.
And that frustration we feel is because we don’t just become accustomed to this access.
We come to rely on it.
For work, home, and everywhere in between.
Postscript:
Just remembered that apparently, 53% of British mobile phone users suffer ‘no mobile phobia’, or nomophobia, ‘with 48 per cent of women and 58 per cent of men questioned admitting to experiencing feelings of anxiety when they run out of battery or credit, lose their phone or have no network coverage.’ (HT Textually.org).
Following the Herd
July 1, 2009 By 3 Comments
I’ve long been a fan of Mark Earls, and his writing on ‘herd theory’, which suggests that we tend to follow what other people do, rather than following the logical, rational decisions we often claim after the fact.
And I’m reminded of that theory every day on my commute to London. First comes the ‘Finsbury Park Standing Experiment’, whereby the first person to stand up in an attempt to gain a couple of vital minutes between leaving the train and joining the queue for the London Underground suddenly inspires everyone to fill the aisle of the carriage for the last 10-15 minutes of the journey. Despite the logical problem that after the first handful of ‘standers’, the rest of the queue fail to gain much time, if any. And people like me stay seated and working and then tend to be sat near the door anyway.
And if I don’t head underground, I then get to watch the ‘traffic light lemmings’. With any large group waiting to cross a road in the morning, it takes just one or two people to begin to cross, and the herd will follow, regardless of whether the lights are red, green, or there is a large lorry hurtling towards them with the lights on and horn blaring.
Meanwhile I undergo a strange transformation:
While I cycle to the station, I find myself becoming irritated by cars and pedestrians..
While I’m on the train, I miss not travelling by car/motorcycle – especially when the wifi fails.
When I’m walking to work, it’s cars and cyclists that cause problems.
Who I perceive to be causing problems and irritation is entirely dependant on which form of transport I’m using at the time, even in the space of the same journey. Am I herding myself into the mass view of that form of transit, or just setting myself apart from the stereotype of each mass transport group?
