High-Tech Grip on the Self-Absorbed
Under the guise of promoting “personal productivity” and greater self-awareness, we’re being surrounded by the emerging technologies of self-consciousness.
No matter which way we turn, there’s technology nagging us to reexamine how we look, sound, express ourselves and think. Who would want to work in an office where every surface was a highly polished mirror relentlessly staring back at you? Yet that is precisely where we are headed.
The irresistible rise of office voice mail, video camcorders and computer systems creates glittering networks of technological mirrors constantly reflecting and focusing fragments of ourselves at us. To be sure, conventional debates around office technology revolve around privacy. Should the boss be able to use state-of-the-art gimcracks to peer, probe, pry and measure workplace behavior? A measure of privacy from others is one thing; what about a measure of privacy from ourselves?
As most white-collar workers would confess, the real stress in our lives comes less from external expectations than internal pressures. Increasingly, technology originally designed to boost productivity has evolved into tools that unnecessarily amplify anxiety. This is one of the unintended--and ill-thought--consequences of these ubiquitous devices. There can be diminishing returns to self-awareness. By the end of the decade, our offices will be populated with people in various stages of creative constipation.
Consider voice mail. I know people who tape no fewer than three or four versions of their answering message to make sure their tone conveys just the right blend of spontaneity, professionalism and warmth. You can hear them discreetly poll people to see if their message sounds appropriate.
Similarly, about a third of the voice mail systems today offer callers the option of reviewing the messages that they leave for others. I’ve watched people spend literally four minutes trying to leave just the “right” 20-second message. Are they perfectionists? Neurotics? Narcissists? I don’t know. But I do know that voice mail has made people extraordinarily sensitive to the shadings and nuances of tone. The technology sensitizes people as much to the sound of the voice as the content of the message.
Indeed, many Fortune 500 companies, such as Merck, IBM and General Electric, are using video camcorders to tape key meetings and interactions. So managers now critique their own “on-camera” performance. In fact, the managers become more performers--self-conscious ones, at that. They dress differently. They try not to look too relaxed. They begin to edit themselves as they talk--” How will this sound next quarter? “ It’s as if a mirror has been thrust in their face along with the tacit command to “Shape up!”
Programmers in organizations ranging from MIT to Bell Labs to Stanford’s Artificial Intelligence Labs are exploring how to get personal computer software to evolve from simple “spell checkers” to “style checkers”--to let people know into which ruts their rhetoric has fallen. Entrepreneurs have developed software that lets people examine their spreadsheet “rhetoric” as well; seeing which liberties Lotus 1-2-3 and Microsoft Excel spreadsheet jockeys have consistently taken with their financial modeling assumptions. Truly “smart” software will be considered smart precisely because it makes users more aware--or self-conscious--about their cognitive styles.
In the same way that unduly vain folk and narcissists like to primp and preen in front of mirrors, narcissists and vanity cases will probably revel in this new technological hall of mirrors. No doubt, as camcorders and computers continue to shrink, they’ll melt into people’s eyeglasses so they can record themselves with the blink of an eye--with the opportunity for instant replay or digital preservation for posterity.
For the less egomaniacal, these technologies promise a professional life of unending questions about where to draw the line. Too little self-awareness, and we deny who we really are. Too much self-consciousness, and we become absorbed in the technological black hole of introspection. Whatever we choose will be revealing.
