Blackberry = Freedom?

How telling! Fours year ago this observation appeared in Men's Health: “You rush out and buy a Blackberry thinking that you'll be able to email and phone people from wherever you happen to be. Suddenly, everywhere will be your office. Within about a week the reality sets in. You're fiddling with the thing all day long, including right before you go to bed. It would be a useful device if you'd turn it off at about 6 p.m. and didn't turn it on again until about 8 a.m., but that's never going to happen.”

Self-Induced Distractions

More than four years ago Johns Hopkins University researchers concluded that using a cellphone -- even with a hands-free device -- may distract drivers because the brain cannot easily handle both tasks. The brain directs its resources to either visual input or auditory input, but cannot fully activate both at the same time. Despite these findings, MORE people are multi-tasking WHILE they drive.

"Our research helps explain why talking on a cell phone can impair driving performance, even when the driver is using a hands-free device," says research leader Steven Yantis, Ph.D. in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences.

"Directing attention to listening effectively 'turns down the volume' on input to the visual parts of the brain," he noted. "When attention is deployed to one modality -- say, in this case, talking on a cell phone -- it necessarily extracts a cost on another modality -- in this case, the visual task of driving.”

Despite these findings, MORE people are multi-tasking WHILE they drive. This is madness, pure and simple. Do you want to be on the road when such people are driving by? Do you want your children to be?

Info You Don't Need While Driving

Imagine losing your life because someone is moronic enough to believe he can navigate a 3000 pound, potentially lethal vehicle while diverting his attention to a device with tiny buttons… Erik Lacitis, writing in the Seattle Times, explains how BlackBerry tapping caused a car-crunching chain reaction on Iinterstate Highway 5:

A 53 year-old man “fiddling with his BlackBerry, was cruising down Interstate 5's express lanes Tuesday morning in his minivan, oblivious that traffic ahead had come to a dead stop…” “His minivan smashed into a car, setting off a chain reaction that included three other cars and a Community Transit bus, which was carrying 28 passengers.

“No one was seriously injured, but the accident near downtown Seattle underscores the dangers of driving while preoccupied with electronic gadgets, other passengers and even ‘driver grooming,’ according to a state study.”

“The driver of the first car rear-ended by the minivan was a 36-year-old Lake Forest Park woman whose 5-month-old son was in a car seat in the back seat. The woman and her son were in satisfactory condition and staying overnight for observation at Harborview Medical Center, according to a spokeswoman.”

This is sheer madness and the essence of ineffective information and communication mismanagement

Cell Phones set for Subway!

This appeared on the Reuters News Wire on Febuary 3, 2006:

Welcome or not, cell phones set for subway, by Ellen Wulfhorst

One of life's ironic oases of solitude – the peace people find amid the roar of a New York City subway – could soon be gone. As New York plans to make cell phones work in subway stations, experts say Americans eventually could be connected everywhere, underground or in the air.

"It's technically feasible, both for airplanes and subways," said James Katz, director of the Center for Mobile Communication Studies at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey. "It's the social aspect that's really the most intractable."

People fall into two camps, one that defends the right to make calls no matter the inconvenience to others and the other that likes an undisturbed atmosphere, he said. Business people tend to belong to first camp, and leisure travelers to the second, he added.

Cell Phones and Family Tension

Study: Cell phones tied to family tension

NEW YORK (Reuters) -- The round-the-clock availability that cell phones and pagers have brought to people's lives may be taking a toll on family life, a new study suggests.

The study, which followed more than 1,300 adults over 2 years, found that those who consistently used a mobile phone or pager throughout the study period were more likely to report negative "spillover" between work and home life -- and, in turn, less satisfaction with their family life.

Spillover essentially means that the line between work and home begins to blur. Work life may invade home life -- when a parent is taking job-related calls at home, for instance -- or household issues may start to take up work time.

In the latter scenario, a child may call mom at work, not to say that he aced his English test but that the "microwave exploded," explained Noelle Chesley, an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and the author of the study.

The problem with cell phones and pagers seems to be that they are allowing for ever more spillover between work and home, according to Chesley's findings, published in the Journal of Marriage and Family. This may be especially true for working women, the study found.

Among men, consistent use of mobile phones and pagers seemed to allow more work issues to creep into family time. But for women, the spillover tended to go in both directions -- being "connected" meant that work cut into home time, and family issues seeped into work life. And people who reported more negative spillover -- spillover of the exploding-microwave variety -- tended to be less satisfied with their family life.

The point, Chesley told Reuters, is that cell phones and pagers seem to be opening more lines for stressful exchanges among family members, rather than positive ones….

Discourteous Cell User? Not Me!

The Sprint Wireless Courtesy Report for 2004, which is a nationwide survey of wireless etiquette, revealed that an overwhelming majority of American adults find that people are less courteous today when using a wireless phone. Yet, no one regards himself as discourteous.