The Experiment: Technology Helps Us Have the Right Conversations

It can be difficult trying to coordinate four individuals and two families living together. Granted this is not really that many people, it still can be complicated knowing when people are going to be in and out. Plus, it can be hard communicating with everyone about things that need to be done or issues that need to be discussed. That is where technology is helping us become a better community. In particular, Google Docs and Google Calendar.

With Google Calendar, each family in our apartment has made a calendar of family activities and shared it. This way, we know when people will be around, when they will be out, when it is good to plan to have people over, and when we can get together and talk about how things are going in the apartment.

With Google Docs, we plan ahead for the conversations we need to have at our next “Family Dinner.” We plan to eat one meal together per week to discuss how things are going. Prior to this, each of us updates a shared spreadsheet on Google Docs. It is a simple document, with a column for positive things, negative things, and other issues. Anything might come up on that from who is or isn’t keeping up their chores, how to handle mail distribution, how to make sure we pray together, or when why we still haven’t beaten a game on the Wii. By doing this, we all can think about things ahead of time and be ready to discuss things at our dinner. We also make sure that we don’t miss anything important that needs to be talked about.

This may be the sort of thing that could be useful families and roommates or even married couples. Having a regular conversations about how things are going and clear communication are crucial for all close relationships. Many, including myself, have lamented how technology often causes us to withdraw from community and makes us more detached from the people around us. Here is a case where technology, especially newer collaborative and social technologies can have the opposite effect.

Friendship, the 8-Hour Work Day, and Electronic Gnosticism

I just read this article about the ineffectiveness of the 8-Hour work day. It was interesting, and by and large, I agree. We need to make adjustments to the fact that information and creative work does not happen the same way as manual labor. As a youth pastor, my I really needed space to think and recharge. I couldn’t write sermons or small group curriculum for hours straight. I had to go for a while and then stop and let things percolate for a while. I needed to work when I was productive, but do something else when I wasn’t mentally on to the top of my game. I suspect that being a student and writing will be similar. So, a flexible schedule makes sense.

However, I wonder if working at home makes the most sense? I hated working in the office at church. It was distracting and unproductive. I worked best at home or the local coffee shop with WiFi. And yet, I wonder if I would have lost something if I wasn’t in the office regularly, both in terms of personal health and productivity. It is the intangible element of relationships. My coworkers were really fun. I liked the people in my office. I liked joking around, talking, and telling stories with them. Over time, what I realized was that my non-work related interactions with my co-workers were almost as important as my direct and official collaboration with them. Our interpersonal connections made collaboration easier because we were more in tune with each other. It made out of the box ideas come up more often because of random conversations that were never intended to connect to work. It made me more able to understand their unique opinions and skills. I could see strengths that they had that weren’t coming out in official business because I saw how they talked with other friends, their families, and even the way they talked on the phone to others. Simply being around other people stimulates a creativity that could not happen if we all worked at home and only collaborated via the Internet or phone. Official collaboration is not as fruitful without accidental collaboration. When I talked with the junior high pastor or the emerging ministries guys I had more good ideas that I never would have had because I was not “officially” working with them. We need the relational indeterminacy that an office provides to provide some of the more creative ideas to come out. We also need more friendships for healthier workers and a healthier society. And for me, I need the accidental contacts that an office creates to really make friends. Of course, if everyone worked at home, perhaps we’d all know our neighbors better and that would have some of the same effects.

I also am hesitant to move more of my life into a mode where physical proximity does not matter. I think we loose a lot of the texture of life if our identities and interactions all exist across wires. When my physical location doesn’t matter anymore, I think I loose something of my identity. There is a gnosticism to the Internet, a duality between the physical and the electronic, between the body and the blog. We have a way of projecting our identity into a world of bits and bytes that get detached from our flesh and blood presence. We become images and profiles of ourselves. Many, if not most, of my friends have become nothing more than a Facebook profile or a blog to me. They physically could be anywhere, but it is okay because their real identity is electronic. Of course, I am one who is guilty of living a very dis-embodied existence. A good portion of my world is on Google Calendar, Gmail, Claytonius.com, and two flash drives in my pocket. My location doesn’t matter. I can do my work from any place that has a USB port and a decent Internet connection. My body is in Wheaton, but my soul is in cyberspace. I think life like this can devalue our physical presence in the world, flatten our friendships, and perhaps because of that impact our productivity in the world of ideas, communication, information, and creativity. I think decentralizing offices tends to move in this direction, and I wonder if it is beneficial. It is a strange world we live in.

Kind of random thoughts today, I know. Not my usual topics, but the thoughts struck me.