 The
Impermanence of Life
By Caroline Chipperfield
Caroline
worked for Canon for a number of years in both
Corporate Development and Marketing. Caroline
was responsible for the creation of the original
Canon UK website, a ground-breaking customer
satisfaction initiative, and several change
management programmes. |
The shops are out of chocolates, Interflora is fully
booked and you need to drop the name of a Hollywood
star to book a restaurant – yes, Valentine’s
Day is upon us once again.
This might seem a bizarre theme for a Teleconomy
article, but new technology – and our use of
it – is even impeding on this most romantic
of holidays.
Years ago, our grandmothers would keep all the letters
and notes their suitors gave them during their courtship
in a box under the bed.
Indeed, most women of my mother’s generation
will have a shoebox or two with letters, cinema tickets
and treasured items from their beaus.
However, the women of my generation are the first
to see technology make a notable change in the way
in which we communicate with our families and friends
and more specifically, with our significant others.
Whilst we too may have received letters from our
first boyfriends, more recently the items we cherished
have become less tangible. Women who may have bundles
of love letters tied up with ribbon may also have
a collection of floppy disks storing hundreds of e-mails.
Even the growth in text messaging in the last few
years has affected our communication patterns. Certainly,
receiving messages wherever you are, whatever you
are doing and having the opportunity to re-read them
on the train, the tube etc has its advantages, but
the fact is that those once-tangible memoirs of our
feelings for our loved ones are gradually getting
more and more impermanent – or rather, intangible.
Those with basic mobile phones are also discovering
another aspect to text messaging which distinguishes
them from formats like e-mail - which we can only
store up to 10 messages at any one time. Which brings
us to a dilemma –
To delete or not to delete?
If you don’t delete a text, which is ‘quite’
special, do you run the risk of an earlier, MORE special
message being deleted when your friends deluge you
with disposable, instant texts?
Even for those with a greater phone message capacity
there is still a problem – if your telephone
reaches its 165-message capacity, do you really have
the time to sift through and save those ‘special’
ones? Anecdotal evident suggests not! A ‘delete
all’ instruction is sent and those digital sweet
nothings are gone forever.
At the moment we have one option – to use the
infrared port on our laptops to store a near-infinite
number of text messages on the computer. This also
allows you to type text messages directly from your
laptop, amazing people with your swift responses.
But laptops are still largely regarded (and owned)
as work tools, so not only do you have to set them
up to interact with your phone, you also have to store
your personal text messages on your company laptop.
Hardly ideal, and hardly secure.
One solution is on its way however. Microsoft is
working on a system they are calling ‘myLifeBits’,
which will hold all the indispensable memorabilia
and documents that most people have on top of a wardrobe.
One of the many benefits is that it will be searchable,
so if you are looking for a Valentine Card from Tim,
you will be able to search by ‘valentine’,
‘cards’ or ‘Tim’. One of the
disadvantages is that bundles of cards held in ribbon
may well be a thing of the past!
In the meantime, however, we may as well embrace
the season – using digital technology of course
- and if you aren’t expecting many cards this
year, perhaps you should try a visit to www.Cosmiccupid.com
to generate a few!
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