First there was the phone. And life was good.

Ok. So all of this technology is supposed to make it easier, right? I’m old enough to remember the time before mobile phones. We had a phone in the office, and one at home. And then we got answering machines sometime in the mid-late 70s.

I actually remember my Dad getting his first car phone. It was the size of a small winnebago. I was 15 or so (this was 1979 or 1980 – you may now do the math to calculate my age), and I couldn’t imagine why he would need a phone in his car. Then one day we were driving in the car, one of his customers called in a panic wanting to know if he could fill an order for some equipment, and he closed a deal right there while we were driving. It was very cool. And we had mail, of course. Slow, yet dependable, mail.

Then voicemail and fax machines came along. I was living in Chicago, working at the global HQ for a large multi-national. Our team was from all over the world. I remember standing by the fax machine with a colleague from South Africa who was faxing his timesheet and expense report back to his home office in Johannesburg. We were marveling that it would only take about 3 weeks for his expense reports to be processed and the funds deposited into his account that he could then access with one of his new “ATM Machine” cards. It had previously taken about 3 weeks just to mail the expense report to anywhere in Africa. Cool doesn’t even come close to the awe we had.

Then email came along. I was living in London in the late 80s and early 90s, working for a large technology firm that was headquartered here in the States. A system from Wang was installed that allowed us to communicate internally to anyone in the UK office (thousand or so people) or any office anywhere in the world (20 thousand or so). Suddenly, we could send messages and communicate with our colleagues across the world. And all we had to do was wait until they were back at their desk either later that day, or the next day depending on where they were in the world. Oh, and we all had ‘mobile’ phones. Once again, very cool.

Then this whole Internet thing happened. It’s the late 90s, I’m back in South Florida working for a Web dev agency, and we grew the agency to 250 people, offices in Fort Lauderdale, Atlanta, Birmingham, New York. Email as we know it today was in full swing. And we had instant messaging! We could have conversations with our colleagues and clients in real time. Phones, Email, fax machines, instant messaging, cell phones (remember when the StarTac came out?). We were wired, and we were cool.

Which brings us to today. We now have iPhones and Blackberrys. Fax machines are rarely used anymore – I don’t think I even list it on my business card. We have emails galore (I have 3 that I check on an ongoing basis throughout the day – I have 2 others that I check about every week or so). The emails are forwarded to our mobiles. We have instant messaging (I have 2 different systems – iChat at work internally, and AIM for everyone else). We also have Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Friendfeed, and a host of other platforms for communicating with each other, colleagues, clients. Each of these has combinations of email and instant messaging functionality. And let’s not forget texting (SMS and MMS).

Don’t check Twitter for a day, and you’ve missed out on so much of what’s going on, that it will impact your career. Well, it seems that way, at least.

So for me, this amounts to:

1. Work Email – Ongoing monitoring
2. Personal Email #1 – Given only to friends (people) – Ongoing monitoring
3. Personal Email #2 – Used for non-friends, and also to sign up for anything online – Ongoing monitoring
4. Personal Email #3 – Older version of #2, but gets so much spam I needed to create another email (#2) – checked about once a week
5. Personal Email #4 – Created to be able to access Yahoo groups when they were somewhat popular.
6. iChat Account – Ongoing monitoring while in the office
7. AIM Account – Ongoing monitoring
8. Facebook – Ongoing monitoring. Facebook has its own email and instant messaging capability. That would be the fifth email, and third IM account.
9. LinkedIn – Ongoing monitoring. Again with the ability to do email (#6). No instant messaging, as of yet.
10. Twitter – Ongoing monitoring. Depending on how you look at it, between 1 and 3 different IMs to follow, when you count regular tweets, @replies, and direct messages?
11. Office phone (who uses those anymore).
12. Mobile Phone, which is a Blackberry. Have this with me all the time. And of course, get notifications from the emails, from Facebook, from Twitter, from LinkedIn, and even from AIM. It sits on my desk, and buzzes all day long, everytime I get a message on one of these platforms.
13. Texting.
14. Voicemail – I have 2, one in my office, and one on my mobile, of course. And there’s one at home, but I don’t really count that one for some reason.
15. Personal Blog (this one, with a mirror) – ability for conversations in the comments.
16. Work Blog – ditto.

And I’m sure I’m leaving something out. Is it just me? Am I the only one? Do you also have this many ‘touchpoints?’ It’s impossible to disconnect. Try and disconnect for even a weekend, and you will never catch up. I don’t know about you, but I’m going crazy trying to keep it all together. I’m not so sure how cool this is anymore.

I once read a description of the life of a Victorian era, senior level British civil servant. He would spend his days creating handwritten letters to his counterparts across the world, in Europe, India, and Africa. Decisions on even minor matters would take weeks, serious decisions would take months as the letters went back and forth. He would take long lunches with colleagues, and be home by 5 PM for dinner and would spend evenings at his club. He would take 2 months off for vacation, spending his time painting landscapes in Tuscany each year. During this time, he would get 1 packet of letters that he would respond to.

A nice life, imho.

Well, gotta go. I have to make sure that this post is linked to on my Facebook and LinkedIn profiles, and then tweet it on Twitter. Cross post it to the other blogs, Digg it, and tell everyone how del.icio.us it is. I also need to Furl it and Spurl it.

Oh, and please comment, so we can continue the conversation. Cool?

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