Week 4: Creepin' on yo funkshins

I really liked Week 4’s readings and lecture. I’ve been thinking about this issue of ‘time-bleeding’ for a while, both on a personal level and in a wider social sense. I’ve been dealing lately with some issues involving unwanted contact via telecommunication. I was advised not to read the text messages this particular person was sending me, and I found my inner emotional battle not to read these text messages to be quite a strenuous one. Even though I knew I would most likely feel hurt and intimidated by what this person was saying, I still wanted to know, just to…know. I felt distressed and angry when I read them, but when I chose not to read them, I experienced the distress of wondering what new threats have been made by this person and what I would have to do to deal with them.  I felt out of control. What a curious sensation to experience: the tension between knowing and not knowing and the sense of a lack of control that rolls in with it. 1^st world issue, maybe?

It’s very possible, according to Gregg. In “Function Creep”, Gregg discusses a similar sensation operating among many professionals in the corporate world of the 21^st Century. Many talk about “anticipatory labour”, or work that they will have to do. Respondents shared that they would check their emails and text messages in order to ‘get their head around’ what was going on at that point in their working day and what they would have to do to “stay on top of work”. One person said they wouldn’t necessarily answer emails, or would answer that they would properly respond at a later point. Many reported this ‘checking’, or connectedness cutting in on family time or other important parts of their day such as exercise, but most seemed to consider work equally, if not more, important than these activities. Many reported that it gave them a sense of control over their lives and that the things that they traded off, such as time with family or time spent carrying out leisure activities were simply required sacrifices in an economic environment like that of the 21^st centure.

The idea that people would consider family time or exercise (or in my case, a blissful ignorance of unnecessary information) less important than the sense of control that comes with ‘knowing what’s going on,’ is indicative to me or an underlying sense that we, as a society, fear the unknown. This is indicated in our seeming unwillingness to allow whatever might happen, should we not read our emails or text messages, to just happen. Something catastrophic might happen; we might fall behind at work or a valid threat might be made, in my case. Then again, maybe life will keep happening, just like it should.

Maybe we should all experiment for a day by talking 24 hours longer to take action on a communication than we normally would. Hmmmm…