A Return To The Dark Ages

All right youngin's ... I want to tell you a story about the olden days ... about a primitive time of real-time conversations ... face-to-face contact with co-workers ... a time when we left the office early enough to have dinner with the family.

I am talking about the time before we had e-mail.

Yesterday I was thrust back to that time along with everyone inside Radio City as for some reason we lost the server that hosts our e-mail, voice-mail, and MS Outlook stuff.

I had no e-calendar.

I had no e-rolodex.

I had no e-notes.

I had no company phone directory.

I had no voice message service.

What I had was a fresh appreciation for technology and how it has changed my life.

I spent a good portion of the morning roaming the halls of Radio City - hunting down those to whom I needed to speak. I had actual conversations with some people I had never met - yet spoke to weekly through e-mail ... People who work in my building.

For most of the day it was very refreshing and sort of fun. But I gotta tell you, by early afternoon it was a drag. While I loved talking with people in person, it was taking FOREVER. By 3pm I realized I was barely going to talk with half of my intended co-workers during the day.

Why?

• E-mail is direct and too the point. I rarely spend time on e-mail small talk - a necessity when relating in person.
• Everyone else was walking around trying to have real conversations too. Some of the more popular destinations had lines that went 5-6 deep. There's no waiting in line via e-mail.
• I can instantly prioritize e-mail. When people stopped by my office, I could not tell them to wait outside as I was expecting someone with more pressing business at any moment.
• E-mail is easy to reference. When communicating through e-mail, I can easily refer to a past message - even include it in the reply. With face to face communication, there is a lot of time spent re-capping and bringing everyone up to speed.

One of the biggest surprises of the day was getting a testy call or two late in the day:

"What do you not check e-mail anymore?"

Only to get more agitated when I reply that our server is down.

This is the first time in my adult life that I have had no access to my pertinent business information. It was hard. I could not do my job without it. I give up.

I am 100% reliant upon technology.