The Hyperlinked Life by Barna Group

Author:Barna Group
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: ebook
Publisher: Zondervan
Published: 2013-12-01T00:00:00+00:00

Relying primarily on hyperlinked relationships, which are sustained by short bursts of witty expressions, the danger is that our ability to handle the give and take of real conversations will atrophy. Will we forget the power of eye contact and the warm touch of a friend who really cares? As we skim relationships, will we lose the ability to read nonverbal signals, to hear in someone’s voice that everything isn’t, in reality, okay?

Maybe. But what’s most disturbing about investing wholly in hyperlinked relationships isn’t that we can’t apply the social skills required to nurture off-line friendships. It’s that we won’t want to. They will simply require too much work for a payoff that takes too long.

Hyperlinked Work

A few years ago, Jun’s colleague and friend Paul said something about his work that has stuck with us ever since: “I find that my job these days is really not much more than pixel-pushing,” Paul said. “Most of the day, I’m staring at my computer and moving pixels around. I click here and something happens. I double click there and some other thing gets done. I barely talk to anyone, at least not in person. I manipulate little dots on a screen and get paid lots for it!”

Many jobs today, especially in corporate America, can be described as pixel-pushing. “Information workers” manipulate little dots on a screen to analyze, create, express, and make meaning of information. Sometimes the pixels are email, other times documents or applications. And because these tasks can be accomplished using connected devices, our jobs demand that we be hyperlinked. That is, we are expected to be plugged-in and always-on, and we are deluged with more information than we can possibly process during a reasonable workday.

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