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8 November 2007
E-mail rules, but Webcam will also be ubiquitous …but how will this affect our children… E-mail can be a blessing or a curse, depending how it is used, as workers often find it hard to plan – or even get to their work – as they are consistently trawling through hordes of e-mail messages, many of them being seriously irrelevant, said Dominique Lagesse, sales director at black-empowered IT training company, IT Intellect Besides the increasing amount of spam and personal e-mails, including jokes, employees are often expected to reply to e-mails on a “quick-return basis”, said Lagesse. “In many cases – despite portable communications – this is not always possible, and it can be counter-productive and distracting. “E-mail is a wonderful communications tool, sure, but workers are being consumed by e-mail right now.” There are, however, a number of advantages. One of them is that e-mail often has the ability to “do away with meetings that take a lot of time”. “With the chaotic state of our traffic – which is worsening – just getting to and from a meeting can take up to two hours. If some meetings can be avoided by using e-mail effectively, then this is a wonderful productivity enhancer. And this does happen in many instances, but, on the downside, the avalanche of e-mail faced by workers is muting its positive effects in many instances.” Commenting further on traffic congestion, Lagesse said the idea of companies employing ‘remote workers’ “should gather more steam”. “Certain types of employees don’t have to clock in at 8.30 am and leave at 5pm, fighting traffic for two hours of the day just to do so. Those that fulfill tasks that don’t require them to be desk-bound - and those employees that are disciplined and dedicated- should be able to work remotely, even from home offices. This is something that is going to have to increase in the future, or else workers will literally be spending half of their working day in cars. Even if the car of the future enables workers to send e-mail, communicate with hands-free voice technology and even run some form of video conferencing, this type of gee-whiz in-car technology will never be entirely safe. The bottom-line is that a driver should not be distracted when driving.” He said Webcam video-conferencing technology is going to be one of the next technological waves. “As this technology becomes more ubiquitous prices will naturally fall. This means more remote ‘meetings’ can be held between branch employees, different companies, or individuals from different companies. Because there is visual interaction, the personal side of communication will not be lost. You will be able to see the person, or people, you are talking to- so it will almost be like a face-to-face meeting. Even smaller businesses will be able to afford this technology – and it will go a long way towards boosting their productivity and saving on time-consuming travel to and from meetings, including the actual cost of travel.” Karen Geldenhuys, recently appointed as managing director of IT recruitment company, Abacus Recruitment, agrees with IT Intellect’s Lagesse, but cautioned that the “ubiquitous use of all kinds of modern technology” is having a negative affect on family life, and on young children. “Children spend far too much time with technology – with gadgets. They are becoming couch potatoes. If webcam becomes so ubiquitous they are going to spend an inordinate amount of time using the technology – as well as using all other gadgets, such Playstation, MP3-players and cellular phones. In fact, the Mix-IT technology that children use via cellular phones is becoming a major problem. There is now a craze with Mix-It that sees teenagers – often as young as 13 – taking videos of a sexual nature conducted with friends and then passing these images onto friends. It is causing the decay of our youth. Unfortunately, too much technology can create its own kind of curse, because often it is not just used for business purposes.” Geldenhuys said that due to the new and alarming “Mix-It” fad, many schools are considering banning cellular phones. |