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The Dark Side of Connectivity
June 14, 2004
By Peter Coffee
Whether we're talking about Japanese schoolgirls—quickly
becoming the world's leading indicator for technology
adoption—or peripatetic U.S. knowledge workers, live
connections and hands-off updates are becoming the sine
qua non. This may mean the death of the PDA as the minimalist
device that Palm was so often congratulated on bringing
to market. The question is whether an always-on connection,
as close as our pocket or even as a piece of lifestyle
jewelry, will disrupt our lives as thoroughly as it's
disrupting the PDA marketplace.
Sony jarred that market with its announcement this
month that U.S. customers will not be seeing new models
of its Clié handhelds, which heretofore set the standard
for what could be done with the Palm operating system
(and accounted for 14 percent of PalmSource revenues,
according to that company's most recent quarterly report).
More quickly than anyone imagined, though, people noticed
that a simple PDA's data starts to get out-of-date as
soon as the device breaks its connection with the mother-ship
PC. And that, it appears, is quickly becoming an unforgivable
weakness—especially as cellular phones and their service
providers have rapidly assimilated photography and other
services into a platform that was born with infrastructure
for making wireless connections and assessing service
fees.
I hope we're a lot further along the learning curve
of recognizing and designing for imperfect network environments
than we were when we started putting modems into PCs.
Some imperfections are just part of the nature of wireless
links: Microsoft's forthcoming platform, for example,
grabs that bull by its long horns, giving developers
a powerful set of tools for dealing transparently with
delayed or intermittent connections.
Some imperfections stem from malice rather than happenstance.
It's both an ominous warning and a welcome sign of proactive
response that Symantec anti-virus protection will be
part of a new Nokia cellular phone package coming to
market this year. F-Secure is planning later this year
to offer anti-virus tools that are optimized for the
limited memory and processing power of smart phones,
but the company itself ironically illustrates the continuing
war between caution and content: The F-Secure Web site
uses ActiveX controls that trigger security warnings
on my machines.
Wireless platforms will likewise struggle to balance
the goals of sizzle and safety. Other consequences of
growing connectivity flow from human nature. We react
with an almost addictive impulse to new opportunities
to connect with one another, and this can create real
behavioral issues on and off the job. "For Some, the
Blogging Never Stops," observed a New York Times headline
at the end of last month. The story profiled people
who admit that they compose long entries several times
a day—which they often go back and reread themselves.
And I recently read that Japanese schoolteachers have
learned to recognize when children are covertly typing
notes to each other on their tiny keyboards; the students
now evade detection by writing notes on the margins
of their worksheets and sending them as images using
their cellular telephone cameras. I used the phrase
"almost addictive," but some mental health practitioners
go further than that.
James Fearing, at the National Counseling Center in
Minneapolis, has proposed a list of symptoms for diagnosing
computer addiction, including being unable to keep promises
to oneself to reduce one's online time or feeling anxious
or depressed when other activities interfere with computer
access. The three-part signature of addiction, observed
psychologist Maressa Orzack in an article in Psychiatric
Times, combines tolerance, withdrawal and compulsive
use, all of which she has seen in many computer users.
She prefers the label "impulse-control disorder" when
substance abuse is not involved, but she observed that
constant access to anonymous connections often reinforces
other psychiatric or psychological problems. We're wired
to connect with one another, and wireless makes it compellingly
easy to do so with many potential benefits. Let's do
it well—reliably, conveniently and securely—but let's
also do it in moderation.
Technology Editor Peter Coffee can be reached at
peter_coffee@ziffdavis.com.
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