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JFB asked for some contributions to his blog.

First I had no idea.
Then too many.

Eventually I have found out that I would end up writing about my own fears and obsession, my own “hobby horse”.

I am a lucky man, for the last two years I have had a steady stress-free well-paid job.

Like a lot of people (in services� companies, which probably does not make a majority but maybe the majority of Web users) I have been used to have a full (or quite close to unlimited) access to the Net. The line between my private and professional life has blurred away: I check my bank accounts and book a plane ticket for my next vacation online from work, I check my professional mailbox anywhere anytime with webmail.

For the time being I am under the impression that I am taking advantage of the situation, but is-it so obvious?

I have taken the habit of checking my favourite sites/blogs every morning. That is about the first thing I do everyday. I barely look at my professional mail to check if there is nothing really urgent pending. It has developed as my morning routine. Checking my favourite content (my personal mail � which is on all day of course, a few blogs, pictures from my favourite flickr contacts, news �) is actually the prelude of a random navigation � going from one hyperlink to another, starting on an article about Iraq for eventually ending up on the most stupid personal page� Now, with my own netvibes homepage on all day, I know about any new post, any new information I am interested in. Real-time phantasm. Going in circles, Words and emptiness.

I believe that this routine is quite common. I actually think that there is less and less people with a real stressful job that leaves them with no time. On the contrary I am quite convinced that because of the efficiency of our economy, less and less key people are needed. That leaves the vast majority of us with a sense of vacuum and angst. It is still very difficult to admit for most of the people because work is seen as an essential value in most societies, but I believe it is spreading (check out the answers when you google “bored at work”) Who could admit to be bored and unproductive in a world where you have to be passionate about your work and hyper-productive?

The Web is a great tool to forget about this anxiety, to distract us from thinking on our condition. For sure, like any media, it is neutral per se. According to the way you use (consume?) it, it can become the greatest amazing tool ever or the most useless time-wasting activity.

I think the majority of users and the majority of people producing non-commercial content have strong ethics and believe in the Internet as a great liberation tool. But I also believe the way we use it has become a symptom of a collective neurosis. And the success of the concept of virtual reality might as well be the premises of more serious psychosis.

The way the Internet affects our perceptions and our relationship to memory and knowledge will have tremendous impacts in our societies. And the collateral damages of the expected benefits have been greatly under-estimated.

So ready for Bread and Web ?

RD

PS oh sure, blogging definitively is a therapy!

PPS Before posting my post I found out that I had even more friends than I thought in the cyberspace. I have actually been part of the Bored at Work Network (BWN) without really knowing it!

More on that here

Who’s more bored at work ?

This entry was posted on Sunday, September 10th, 2006 at 11:03 pm and is filed under Real Questions. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.