Fri 1 Dec 2006
They call them Crackberry instead. I don’t have one; I’m already addicted to my trusty Treo, being a Palm guy for a long time, and wanting to take the next step of combining my phone and Palm into a single device.
Blackberry have probably led the charge toward the adoption of smartphones. Together with GPRS and now 3G, they have truly changed the way people engage with the internet. Mobile data rates have dropped an order of magnitude or so in the last 6 months, and plans with a similar structure to traditional (wired) ISP plans are now available via SIMs. This means that these smaller devices can challenge products like iBurst. Already the battle lines are being drawn on the quality of mobile 3G internet service, and this is sure to spread. The great news for MVNOs is that even wholesale pricing is now available to enable them to compete effectively (which is so often the challenge of the non-network owning reseller).
And these devices are so addictive (see here, here, and here). I can’t wait for the lawsuits and the RSI injury claims that will arise from their use.
Giving a staff member a Blackberry or Smartphone is like chaining them to work 24/7. Users talk of the Blackberry “changing their life”, and “bringing work into their life”. We used to be able to finish work at 5pm (or 6pm, or 7:45pm) and then go home. Not any more. There is an expectation to be available all the time, connected all the time, and therefore working all the time. This cannot be healthy for the work-life balance. When someone describes it as “liberating” because they don’t need to be in the office, I get worried.
The word that comes to mind is cyborg. To those of you not brought up on a steady diet of The Six Million Dollar Man or Star Trek TNG and the borg, a cyborg is an organism (like a human) that is enhanced with technology. Whether it’s bionic legs, a cochlear implant, or a Blackberry always in your pocket that you check while you should be watching the movie, it comes down to this: if your life is enhanced by technology that you are intimately connected to, you might just be a cyborg.
The world has changed: resistance is futile.
December 1st, 2006 at 10:33 pm
Hi, Just wanted to not that blackberry is 100% compatible with iBurst as the smart cyborg actually uses Bberry to get a glimpse and answer all the quick stuff on the go and at anytime of the day or night and then when he wants a more serious data injection or do a real upload he uses a laptop PC (yes they’re not yet redundant by looking at the latest 30% sales increase) to download files, browse the web, access his intranet and send/post info to the web and his correspondents.
The word “and” is the one to remember, not bberry “or” iBurst. Same can be said about “3G” given that many countries only have this and 2G covers small towns and countrysides. so have your bberry AND iBurst AND 3/2G connectivity AND ADSL is the real cyborg of 21 st century.
thinking outside the box…
December 25th, 2006 at 11:20 pm
I am a complete BB addict and use my 8700g for just about everything.
At work I process nearly 120+ emails a day and this would not have been possible without my BlackBerry. I agree that now I work longer, but I feel that I could not have been as productive without my BlackBerry.
I agree to your point of view — “The world has changed: resistance is futile.”
Cheers!
November 16th, 2007 at 3:32 pm
http://www.theage.com.au/news/national/addictive-devices-take-hold/2007/11/10/1194329568816.html
February 16th, 2010 at 12:33 am
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