Steven Kamer's buddy list on Yahoo! Messenger represents much of his personal and professional universe: a gallery of user IDs networked to his life. When he gets to work every morning at Totality, a Web-services company based in San Francisco, the first thing he does is fire up his laptop and log on to this virtual world. His fiance is often waiting there, and so are his colleagues, who communicate mostly by instant messaging as they work to keep websites running smoothly for clients such as American Airlines and BestBuy.com.
On a typical afternoon, Kamer, 30, participates in half a dozen simultaneous IM conversations through a cascade of pop-up windows on his computer screen. One colleague might be trying to fix a hardware problem at a client's data center on the East Coast, while another is logging on to the client's system from a Denver hotel suite. Instant messaging lets the team collaborate efficiently without playing telephone tag or having their e-mail messages cross in the ether. "IM is the most convenient way to consult co-workers and solve a problem quickly," Kamer says. "I find it indispensable."
Instant Messaging used to be the domain of teenagers, who used it to chat about, well, whatever it is that teenagers chat about. Now, though, businesses are discovering the usefulness and cost-effectiveness of using IM to conduct business all over the place. Of course, the down side is that now more than ever there is no escape. Technology reinvents itself as the latest- and most efficient- ball and chain.
For most of us, the question really is how fast is fast enough, and how much is too much? IM, though efficient and instantaneous, creates an immediacy that may be almost superfluous. Do we really NEED to do business at Internet speed? Or can most issues still be handled via email, which allows one to ponder, consider options, and present a perhaps more reasoned and thought-out response?
David Autor, a labor economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, says there is little hard evidence that IM makes offices more efficient. "My strong suspicion is that there are no further productivity gains to immediate communication that haven't already been realized by e-mail," he says. At the same time, he adds, IM provides an even greater temptation than e-mail does to "set aside real work" and engage in office gossip or chitchat with friends. Instant messaging, he says, offers "a vast potential for time waste."
Business professionals who have to juggle e-mail, cell phones, landlines, pagers, faxes and now instant messaging are in danger of becoming "multitasking junkies," says Tom Austin, a vice president at Gartner, a technology consultancy based in Stamford, Conn. He believes IM social chatting is less of a threat to productivity than is the splintering of focus that the technology encourages. While bouncing from one conversation to another, Austin says, distracted workers are more likely to miss key points and make mistakes. He likens the risk to eating and talking on a cell phone while driving. "It can create an accident," he says. "You're not fully engaged."
I can understand the temptation to multitask. The feeling of doing more than one thing at a time can be intoxicating, and it can lead one to feel that one is accomplishing more than one actually is. It used to be enough to deal with a customer on a one-on-one basis, whether in person or on the telephone. When dealing with more than one simultaneously, is anyone really getting your full attention? When hopping from one conversation to another, which I've tried and don't particularly enjoy, it's easy to feel like a hamster on an exercise wheel. You spend your time trying to juggle conversations, instead of fully appreciating and understanding. This may well be a case of too much technology. Call me old-fashioned, but I like having the freedom to be able to do one thing at a time, particularly if it involves dealing with another person. I would certainly expect someone's undivided attention, and I see no reason why the same should not be expected of me.
