Time-shifting our lives

I had some time to hang out at Dunn Bros and catch up on some reading. Most magazines these days are just fluff, usually covering the latest buzzword or topic (which they'll come out against 3 months from now) but yesterday, "Time" had an interesting article about the way communication has evolved in recent years.

It first talked about how Skype pretty much allows us to do the sort of thing we all thought we'd be doing 30 years ago - being able to see as well as hear someone when talking to them, in real time. But for the most part we've all decided we don't want that. Sure, it's got its uses - for families who live far apart it allows a grandparent to see a grandchild over the internet, or for soliders overseas they can visually their families regularly.

But on the whole, we've all moved to "time-shifting" our lives. It's apparent in things like TiVo, DVRs, on-demand, etc. where we can watch something when we want to, not on some network's schedule. But we do it with our communication too. How many of us actually talk on the telephone most of the time? I know at work the telephone is usually a last resort in favor of IM, email, etc. unless it's a phone conference meeting. And we're all doing it in our personal lives too - how many times have you had a conversation over text messaging over a period of a half hour that could have probably been one minute on the phone? Or email back and forth a similar conversation? Or IM? And the thing is, we all really prefer it this way, because it gives us control over our single greatest resource - our time. Sure, it is sometimes annoying if you need to know something right away, waiting for that response, but in general we all seem to want things this way and are willing to tolerate the occasional delay in a needed response for the non-intrusivity of being able to reply on our schedule.

Certainly talking on the phone isn't going to go away, and sometimes texting actually gets in the way of what we're actually doing in real life (you've all been around that person you're hanging out with, talking with, etc. that is texting every 30 seconds and not paying attention to what they're actually doing), but I know when I read this article and actually sat down and thought about, I had to admit this is the way I like it.