Guerrilla thinking

It is sometime great to just sit down and think of the good old times.

Days when you didn’t have a cell phone or a pager. 
Days when being out of the office just meant to be out of reach.
Days when the the word “urgent” meant “to be done within tomorrow” not “within an hour”.

That’s probably why when the Internet came we all thought it couldn’t be anything harmful.

We thought the freedom we had conquered through the ages had finally come to its higher level. We were excited and ready for a new era.

A time of freedom when we would work at home or anywhere in the world and whenever we like. Being office-free and connected would represent the beginning of true freedom and liberation from an ancient way of living our work.

The most talented among us imagined themselves in the woods or by the sea with a device in their hands able to let them do their jobs in the most efficient way from a distance.

As far as that prediction is concerned, it was true.
Alas, the messianic view of upcoming history was not. Absolutely not.

Infact, never before in history have workers been so much chained to their daily business activities like nowadays.

We are not obviously saying that the web is the evil.
But it is time to look at some facts of our daily work and leisure life and make some considerations.
The web promised we would be more free, we would have more time for our personal life and would be more updated and aware.

Were these promises fulfilled? Were our expectations met?
Not really, not for everyone at least. Here’s why.

1) PEOPLE WORK MORE (IN OR OUTSIDE THE OFFICE). AND THEY THINK IT’S COOL

Nobody can deny this. Ever since the Internet came we work more than before.
We work in the office, on the bus/subway/car to our home. We often work at home.
We work during the weekends at the mountains.
Working late has become cool.
But please, keep in mind that reading your emails on the latest tablet or smartphone may look great and awesome, but it’s always work. 
Next time you send an email with a report/presentation to your boss during a weekend you would be supposed to spend having fun with your friends, take a moment to shoot a picture to yourself with your new 8 MEGAPIXEL camera smartphone.
Look at you: you are a nerd monkey. Sad but true. 

2) WORK AND PRIVATE LIFE HAVE BECOME THE SAME

Because people work too much and more than before, they tend not develop their own social sphere and to familiarize too much with their colleagues.
Coworkers became a sort of a family for them and this lead them to spend more time at the office and to share their spare time with them.
Of course they often end up talking about work and in the end… working.
Work and private life mix together, so that the time people would spend for minding their own business becomes extra-non-paid time they dedicate to someone else’s.

4) PEOPLE ARE MORE AND MORE IGNORANT

As said in a previous post in this blog, the wide and infinite amount of information available on the web, got people to think they don’t need to know anything.
Google has the answer.
And people have become to lazy to deepen any subject. And they don’t.
Unless it’s a part of their job, they won’t deepen anything. Simply because they know they could whenever needed. And they could do it in a couple of clicks.

FINAL CONSIDERATIONS

The web has the power to change our perception of reality and get people together to change the world.
But the way it has been used so far reflects our own attitude and perception of the world rather than our will to change it or improve it.
We let our society eat and adapt the web to an ancient model of living and working.
In other words we think the power of the web is yet to show its full potential.