“The Digital People” – The New Dependence [Part 4]

This blog post will build on what was stated in my previous blog plost:

We – the digital people – are now intimate with our technology and therefore it influences our behavior on an unconscious level.

Building on that, I will try to explain the consequences of another statement from my previous blog post:

We are always online.

At first sight, it appears that new technologies has given us the gift of freedom, by allowing us to transcend our spatial (I’ve always wanted to use that word – it really just means “space) boundaries.
BUT what Søren Schultz found in his research, was that we feel something very different from freedom. Instead of feeling free, we feel a need or an obligation to always be available. We have to be available –> because people expect us to be availiable –> because we are now able to always be available.

When the new technology freed us from the constraints of space it  bound us to the constraints of time instead. Schultz named this phenomenon time dependence.

When I first read about this I was quite suprised, because I could relate to the feeling described in the words time dependence. It is the feeling I get everytime I am in class and my iPhone vibrates. It’s the feeling I get when I am having a conversation and my iPhone vibrates.

I know I am not supposed to check it, but I want to.

The conclusion of this blog post is the same as the last one:
As an eMarketer you need to be careful not to overextend when you post things online or send out e-mails because, in many cases, you may be poking the always-available-people in real life!

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