Ravi Blogs about IT Topics

Last few days have been very exciting and stressful. I attribute most of this to my personality and the technology that enables us to be connected at all times. I cannot let a minute go by without checking whether I have a new email; whether a facebook buddy has updated the status; the status of the markets; how the relative electoral vote balance is shifting between the two presidential candidates; and finally, how  all the services at Wesleyan are doing. And I do this at work, at home (even while watching TV or movies), and even while driving (on my iPhone). I am getting better by not checking my iPhone every so often while golfing and I no longer keep the iPhone next to me when I go to sleep!!!

On the one hand, this connectivity is great… I get to know so much of what I want to know when I want to know. I have RSS feeds of all relevant materials of interest coming to my Google start page, but it refreshes so often and there is always something new. The market volatility during the past week is a great example where the numbers literally changed every minute in wild variations. This has a serious effect where one starts wondering about the retirement savings and whether I should panic and do something. Thankfully I have stayed away from all of that as per the advice from the professionals and my good friends with years of experience in the financial industry.

I have several connections through social networking which spans the globe – Europe, Asia and Australia. The time difference means that I keep seeing someone from this group either wanting to IM me on Google or updating the status on facebook. In other words, in my electronic world, something seems to happen all the time with the people that I am connected with. There was a bombing in New Delhi and I got an email from a friend within five minutes saying that some of the people who we know who live in the area are all fine.

I tend to check my iPhone often when I drive (I am very careful about when I do this, of course). Sometimes it is because I feel that the email I am receiving has something to do with a service disruption – I am really paranoid about this. We have many probes that keep checking to make sure that our network, servers such as Blackboard and databases are all working fine and when some service is interrupted, some of us get notifications. If I get one, I immediately call the person in charge to get on top of the issue right away. Some times, that person may be in a meeting and may not get to see the email right away, so I tend to do it. Thankfully, we do not get a lot of these notifications, but it is very important to me to be able to resolve these right away.

The negatives are obvious. This is addictive and very disruptive. I try very hard not to do some of this when we are watching a movie or when we are out eating dinner. It is funny that in some settings (with a certain group of friends) everyone is doing this, so you feel at ease doing this.

Frankly, not much has changed about my life because of this – we still have a very active social life, we still go for a walk every day, we still watch a lot of movies (granted, some of the Bollywood and Kollywood movies don’t require a lot of concentration) and read a fair amount. Except, we do all of this while also constantly checking emails, the web and whatever else is the new thing on the net!

I know that I am continuing to do what I do because I enjoy it and don’t have any complaints so far… But I also know that some days I wonder whether this is scalabale and is healthy… For now, I will just keep wondering and not change much.