Solitude is Golden

Too many career professionals are uncomfortable with solitude. Increasingly, this discomfort tolerates only shorter and shorter attention spans. To retreat into one's own mind, to pause, to reflect is now treated as if it were enemy territory, yet these skills are needed now more than ever!

Exhibitionists Reign Supreme

In a world of too much competing for everyone’s attention, individually it’s harder to get noticed. This could explain why vast segments of the population have turned to online exhibitionism. Writing in the Washington Post, economist Robert J. Samuelson says, “ It turns out that the Internet has unleashed the greatest outburst of mass exhibitionism in human history.”

“Everyone may not be entitled, as Andy Warhol once suggested, to 15 minutes of fame. But everyone is entitled to strive for 15 minutes -- or 30, 90 or much more… This is no longer fringe behavior. MySpace has 56 million American "members." Facebook, which started as a site for college students and has expanded to high school students and others, has 9 million members. …YouTube, a site where anyone can post home videos, says 100 million videos are watched daily.”

Samuelson notes, and it’s hard to counter, that “People seem to crave popularity or celebrity more than they fear the loss of privacy.” However, “what goes on the Internet often stays on the Internet. Something that seems harmless, silly or merely impetuous today may seem offensive, stupid or reckless in two weeks, two years or two decades. Still, we are clearly at a special moment.”

Samuelson concludes by noting that “Henry David Thoreau famously remarked that ‘the mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.’ Thanks to technology, that's no longer necessary. People can now lead lives of noisy and ostentatious desperation. Or at least
they can try.”

Cell Phone and Driving

No amount of mitigation will diminish the reality that driving and talking on the phone is not as safe as simply driving. The vendors of cell phones and other vehicle gadgetry will argue that speaking to others in the car, listening to the radio, or engaging in other such behavior is equally hazardous. This is not true in any respect because of a concept known as sharp attention.

You can only give your sharp attention in one basic direction. Listening to the radio or CD, or speaking with someone in the passenger seat does not pose the same risk. The reason is that your sharp attention can continue to be on the road, and as practical, you can give some attention to the radio, CD, and the passenger in the seat next to you. However, at any given moment, your driving takes precedence.

This is not the case with the use of the cell phone — concentrating on the conversation on someone at a distance and driving compete with one and another. If activist state legislators get their wishes, people who hold a cell phone to their ear while driving may soon find themselves talking to a judge. That's the message that could come from more and more states considering legislation that would ban the use of handheld, wireless phones while operating an automobile.

The legislative efforts come in response to an increase in cell phone use while driving, hands free or not, which some politicians say has led to more vehicle accidents. Momentum for this cause has been building ever since The New England Journal of Medicine published a study in February, 1997, titled: "The Association of Cell Telephone Calls and Motor Vehicle Collisions." The article concluded that drivers talking on a cell phone are four times more likely to get into car accidents than those who aren't, and they are 11 times likely to die in an accident.

Multitasking in your car is not pretty. The message for readers: do not use a cell phone in your vehicle when the engine is on, and minimize conversation time with those who make such calls to you.