“Our desire to outstrip “Time” has been fatal to more things than love….We have minimised and condensed our emotions…We have destroyed the memory of yesterday with the worries of tomorrow…We do not feel and enjoy; we assimilate and appropriate”.

Believe it or not the above quote was made by an editorialist in the London Star in 1901 when complaining about the rise of the telegram as a means of communication.

This commentary is even more appropriate to the level of communication technology available to us in 2010. It has been said that the average office worker sends and receives over 200 emails a day! That seems a little on the high side to me however there is no argument that much of our daily workplace communication is now done by e-mail.

While the ease of communication has been greatly enhanced there are corresponding downsides. The expectation that seems to accompany this ease of communication is that our response times should be quicker.

In most office environments workers have computer work stations with the PC as the central focus and tool of trade. Unless you have either not logged on or you have de-activated the e-mail alert system on your PC you will throughout the day be bombarded with incoming e-mail messages of varying levels of importance.

The temptation of course is to read each e-mail as it comes through just in case there is an urgent matter to be dealt with. Consequently we spend most of the day with one eye on a task at hand and the other on the computer screen.

This in and of itself can create a sense of overwhelm and can also result in our not being 100% focussed on the job in front of us. So we are stresed to the max and not doing a particularly good job at the same time. Sounds like a recipe for disaster to me!

Add to this the cell phone technology that now allows us to connect to the internet via out mobile phones.

We are now being constantly assaulted by a “tsunami of other peoples needs.”

When do we get to address our need for a balanced life? Where has our valuable downtime gone?

Is it no wonder that stress levels are at epidemic proportions and much of the world’s working population are having to sedate themselves with anti-depressants or to resort to alcohol or nicortine to alleviate feelings of overwhelm.

It is interesting that on the one hand social networking media has connected us to the whole world. However, it has also meant that we spend much of our free time checking our facebook pages instead of just relaxing and switching off.

It has also made it less necessary for us to meet and interreact with real people. “Technology has isolated us from the people with whom we live, siphoning us away from real-world places where we gather” – John Freeman.

When we retreat from the real world into cyberspace we start living smaller lives. The quality of our communications is significantly reduced through the use of phones and e-mails. Much is lost because we can no longer intuit subliminal messages that are being sent physically and energetically between communnicating parties.

The whole issue is whether we continue to allow technology to control us or whether we retake control and use technology as a tool which can assist us.

It may be time as John Freeman states ‘to push back against the machines and the forces that encourage us to remain connected to them”.

Think twice before you next press the “send” button!