Hamlet's BlackBerry Read Online Free PDF

get out of the car. The phone, in all likelihood a grimy, graffiti-smeared affair, would have required coins or a phone card, meaning more time and bother. The whole cumbersome process would have cost me at least ten minutes, making me that much later for dinner. Instead, I hit one button, instantly reached the party I needed to reach, and accomplished my goal without losing a minute of drive time.
    This was not an earthshaking achievement. The trouble and time I saved weren’t valuable to anyone but me and my mother, and even then, ten minutes is hardly a big deal. Yet it was the very triviality of it, paradoxically enough, that made it meaningful. Life is full of tiny moments like this one. Need to find somebody’s address? Order a pizza? Copy a colleague on that memo you wrote yesterday to the vice president for sales? Find out how you did on the math test? Pay a bill? Check the weather? Many of the tasks that we use our computers and cell phones to accomplish are mundane and, by themselves, seemingly insignificant. But taken together, they add up to something very important.
    After all, we spend most of our time and energy on the practical side of life, the ceaseless flow of routine tasks performed all through the day. And there’s little choice in that matter. Before you can get on to the more consequential tasks you really care about, you have to take care of the small stuff. If you don’t pay the mortgage, you won’t have a house to shelter you and your loved ones. If you don’t book the tickets and renew your passport, the dream vacation will never happen. If you don’t check your work inbox regularly, there goes your brilliant career. In effect, our highest goals and dreams, everything we’re shooting for in life, is riding on our ability to plow through those practical to-do items as efficiently and effectively as possible.
    Though ten minutes is a paltry gain, when you multiply it by the number of practical tasks performed in a typical day, the potential savings in time and energy are considerable. This is the first and most basic reason why, in the last two decades, human beings have embraced digital technologies and reorganized their lives around them. And why it makes good sense that we have done so. Computers and smart phones make it much easier to accomplish the small workaday jobs that are the foundation, the sine qua non, of our larger lives and ambitions.
    Our culture reminds us every day how useful these devices are, and exhorts us to take advantage of this by making sure we are as digitally connected as current technology allows. “Get Connected!” urges the cover of Parade magazine, one of the more reliable windows into the mind of middle America. The cover photo shows a celebrity comic wearing his trademark wacky grin. He’s surrounded by digital devices, and there’s a USB plug coming out of his ear. Inside are articles explaining how digital technology “is putting politics back in your hands,” “bringing people together in unexpected ways,” and “can make your life easier.” And there’s “A Bonus Pull-out Section” about “your digital home.” The emphasis is on the practical: save yourself trouble and prosper with the new connectedness.
    It’s a no-brainer, not just for individuals but for businesses, government agencies, and organizations of all kinds. In this highly competitive world, speed and efficiency are the name of the game. Technology is about cutting costs, expanding reach, and streamlining management, thereby improving (if all goes well) overall performance and the bottom line. Again, a brilliant way of getting the small goals accomplished in the service of much larger ones. These tools have also made it much simpler for individuals with common interests and goals to find one another and create new organizations and movements. The advent of what writer Clay Shirky calls “ridiculouslyeasy