Living a Digital Life, Efficient or Exhausting?
I was wondering recently if we were becoming more like computers… or, if I was getting really philosophical, whether computers were becoming more like us. It started when I watched one of my favourite episodes of Friends in which Ross talks about ‘interfacing’ and ‘being able to live life as a computer’.
I laughed a lot the first time that I watched this but as each incessant repeat of that episode comes on, I feel like it’s becoming more true to life – or more particularly, my life. I’m not talking about being able to calculate complex pure mathematical problems. More that the terms we use every day to describe the features we want from our computing, online or server environments can be applied increasingly, and appropriately, to our daily activities.
Multitasking = Running two or more programs at the same time on the same single-processor computer.
This is so empirically true of my (and surely everyone’s?) life right now it’s almost too obvious to mention. But take a moment to think about the term multitasking as it used to exist. It used to be deemed as a ‘talent’ or a ‘skill’ that only the gifted possessed. Now, with all our gadgets and cries of ‘there’s an app for that’, we don’t have to work so hard at it.
Example: The other night I found myself using my iPhone to follow a recipe for soup, whilst also using the same device to brainstorm with a friend on career strategy, using the laptop to answer emails, surf Facebook and pay bills, and watching my SkyPlus to catch up on my missed television – simultaneously. I struggle to include all that in one sentence. Yet believe it or not, I was able to satisfactorily achieve all my tasks, although I do wonder if I had done so to my full capability… which brings me onto…
Effectiveness = The degree to which objectives are achieved and the extent to which targeted problems are resolved.
Which to Ultraspeed means devising systems and processes which will not only work, but work to a level that meets client and business expectations. Personally this means employing physical and mental to-do lists, then making sure that these to-do lists correspond to physical and also mental calendars for both my personal and professional commitments, and then ensuring that when these to-do lists are completed they are checked off with the relevant parties. Another unreasonably long sentence.
A process typically completed in a quick and easy fashion by computers is now expected of us as individuals – we must all be organised, absolute in the undertaking of all tasks, and report the completion of those tasks against a given or unseen procedure… which in turn brings me to…
Efficiency = The comparison of what is actually produced or performed with what can be achieved with the same consumption of resources.
The expectation of most people today is ambitious: that we will be able to operate our finances, time, energy and skills efficiently to learn, teach, improve and add to our own and others’ daily lives. In fact, this is not an expectation but a demand that placed upon us by ourselves and society in general. I would argue that due to the current level of recession, ill health and average working hours we are not working efficiently as a whole. Yet when you break things down to an individual level most people somehow manage to pay their bills, manage their health, and have some semblance of a work-social balance that works for them. You might say it’s kind of like the principles of virtualisation, where each of us are given a certain amount of resource to manage our own requirements and needs.
I grant you this may all sound quite geeky, but I bet that when you start to give it some real thought you’ll realise that we could all be ‘living life as a computer’ sooner than we think, albeit on a more human and sensitive level (let’s hope). Ross’s dream of cyber-living could come true.
AND…
The Telegraph summarised Ofcom’s annual Communications Market Report and found that “People are also using several media at the same time, surfing the internet while watching television or listening to the radio as they write emails. That allows the average person to cram eight hours and 48 minutes of media time in to a seven hour period during the day.” (Midgely, 2010)
How’s that for multitasking?
Check out these stats if you need more evidence:
Facebook Usage
- Facebook claims that 50% of active users long into the site each day – that’s 175 million users every 24 hours.
- More than 35 million Facebook users update their status each day.
- There are around 2.5 billion photo uploads to the site each month.
- It is available in more than 70 translations
- The average user has around 130 friends on Facebook.
- More than 65 million users access the site through mobile-based devices.
- There are more than 3.5 billion pieces of content (links, stories, posts, etc.) shared each week on Facebook.
- More than 250 Facebook applications have over a million combined users each month.
Twitter Usage
- Twitter has 75 million user accounts with around 15 million active on a regular basis.
- Towards the end of 2009 the average number of tweets per day was over 27.3 million and the average per hour was around 1.3 millioin.
Our Increasing Overall Usage
- Flickr hosts more than 4 billion images
- Wikipedia has in excess of 14 million articles – so it’s 85,000 contributors have written nearly a million new posts in six months.
- 15% of bloggers spend 10 or more hours each week blogging. (Technorati’s State of the Blogosphere)
- Over 40% of internet users already listen to or watch conventional TV while surfing the net.
- Worldwide internet users spend 4.6 hours on social media and 4.4 hours on email per week.
Definitions are from Business Dictionary.
Unless otherwise indicated statistics were obtained from Econsultancy’s Internet Statistics Compendium and a 2010 Econsultancy blog article “20+ mind blowing Social Media statistics revisited” by Jake Hird.
For further internet-related statistics you can purchase your own copy on the Econsultancy website.
About Namuli Katumba
Namuli is Head of Account Management and Service at Ultraspeed. You can find her on Twitter at @namkat.