thelongnews.com

I was struck today thinking about a long term change that has taken place in our personal lives — that of keeping in constant contact.  The newspaper had articles recently about a trolley driver in Boston who was texting someone while driving the trolley; the resulting crash injured 49 people.  On a more mundane level, I was just in Vienna taking a taxi to my hotel, when a taxi driver missed my exit and ended up driving across a river and back before depositing me successfully at my location — because his wife had called him while he was driving me and caused him to forget my exit.  And sure, I love myself to keep in touch, to call my wife from Vilnius or Bratislava or wherever and to talk about my son’s ballgame or what the dog is doing.

Keeping in touch is something we all like to do.  Historically, though, a hundred years ago, people might keep in touch via written letters which could take weeks or months to be delivered.  After the mid-nineteenth century, urgent news could travel by telegram, which was expensive and usually contained only the worst possible news, such as a son dying in battle or the loss of loved one.  Still, until around 25 years ago, constant contact was expensive and required expensive and uncommon equipment.

Now, of course, constant contact is ubiquitous and nearly free.  Texting costs pennies, twitter and facebook and gmail are basically free anywhere in the world.  Everyone can keep in touch any time, anywhere.  Clearly, though, when it comes to safety, cell phones for trolley drivers should clearly be left at the office.  But for others, perhaps a bit of thought and consolidation is in order.  When we have a chance to reflect a bit, rather than just react or post something without filtering, the quality of our interactions improves and the value of the information increases.  In a world where it is all too easy to be buried in a flood of low-level unfiltered data points, the value of a more thoughtful and reflective view becomes significantly more estimable.