Technology is a bit like Hitler
At the risk of sounding like Jean Baudrillard, I would like to suggest that the Internet revolution has not yet taken place. So far, lots of very clever people have performed amazing feats of technical ingenuity. Rather than making us freer, more relaxed and more efficient, in general everyone seems busier, more distracted and more tense.
Unfortunately, technology is a bit like Hitler: it doesn’t know when to stop. A lag between technological progress and behaviour change is only to be expected. Technological progress is at times very rapid and exponential, whereas changes in human behaviour follow a sigmoid curve: slow at first, then rapid, then hitting a plateau. I noticed this first-hand when the highspeed rail service opened in Kent 10 years ago. Conventional wisdom would predict people would instantly switch to the new, faster line. It didn’t work like that. For the first few years, alighting at Ebbsfleet station felt like Bad Day at Black Rock. Then suddenly it tipped. In the past five years usage has grown by 200,000 passengers a year, and the trains are packed.
Most behaviours follow this sigmoid path. The fall in drink-driving or smoking; the rise in divorce; attitudes to homosexuality; car use; mobile phone adoption; the craze for gin, the fashion for beards. But some step change is overdue in the patterns of working behaviour. In 1988 I had to go into the office to do almost anything. Now, other than talking to people face to face, there is nothing work-related which I cannot do at home. In education, there is an interesting development called “flipping the classroom”. Traditionally teachers talked at pupils during the day, setting them exercises as homework. The new approach aims to reverse this.
I recently tried an experiment which I recommend highly: “flipping the office”. Other than for half an hour in the middle of the day, I refuse to use any technology in the office at all. Sometimes this means I go home at 4 pm and do emails on the train. If I have no one to meet, I travel in late. Or I work from home for one day a week and pack all phone calls and emails into that day. Granted, not everyone can do this. But if only 10 per cent of people started the trend, peak-time overcrowding could largely go away. By arrangement with the Spectator