Lamenting the loss of leisure

Chris Shipley • Published December 7th 2005

As one reader stated, “the idea of getting independence from technology is as impossible.” I’m not suggesting we can be rid of technology. That genie just won’t go back in the bottle –and we wouldn’t want it to. Still, there is something very different about the so-called information age than any previous economic and cultural sea change.

While history marvels at the new efficiency of the industrial age, the greatest by-product of marvelous machines wasn’t productivity or even economic growth, it was time. Relieved of long and hard labor, people discovered leisure. And leisure itself became an economic driver, as people engaged in a host of new activities in their now “free” time.

Ironically, the information age seems to rob us of our leisure.

Through wonderful technologies, we can receive information (almost) anywhere at any time. And so we do.

We carry information receivers – mobile phones, BlackBerries, and the like – everywhere. We select vacation hotels based on availability of Wi-Fi, or at the very least an Internet kiosk.

We check e-mail incessantly. A survey by America Online published in the San Jose Mercury News found that 26% of Americans say they can’t go more than two or three days without checking e-mail. The survey also discovered that people are checking e-mail:

➢ in bed (23%),

➢ in meetings (8%),

➢ in the bathroom (4%), and even

➢ in church (1%).