For use: Friday, October 27, 2000 and thereafter

 

Future Shoes: "The Wail of the Internet Siren"

by Michael Finley

Computer User Columnist 

I got a call the other day from a French magazine journalist writing an article about computer games and productivity. Her thesis was that companies were losing millions because employees were goofing around with Solitaire, Minesweeper, Yahtzee and Rogue Spear, instead of doing their work.

I told her she was a franc short and about a dozen years late.

Yes, there has always been a certain kind of employee that will waste time on games that mean nothing and are addictive mainly to poor souls with no better hope for release from the confines of job boredom. It's expensive and sad.

But the loss of productivity is a drop in the bucket compared to the everyday loss experienced by all types of employees -- sad and happy, engaged and bored to the bone -- who go online to do their work.

They start looking for One Thing, but before they know it, they are distracted by Something Else.

Look into your heart, and admit this has happened to you. There are always more interesting things on the Net than the thing we want to look up. So we get seduced by their siren call, and we click one link, and then another, and before you know it, a half hour has vanished. You not only did not fetch the information you wanted on modular shielded circuit packs, but you have forgotten all about them.

Thus do organizations lose focus and, in the fullness of time, the ability to breathe.

But oh, how we rationalize it:

• "I came upon something very interesting today while surfing the web. Maybe we can it to work in our organization."
• "My clients need me to be on top of lots of things, not just the success or failure of their stupid products."
• "Nothing so enlivens the mind for work as frolic in the virtual fields."

It's bad enough to do it, but to charge our clients and employers for it. Tsk, tsk.

This siren image, of course, derives from Homer's tales of brave Ulysses, or Odysseus. Odysseus, widely thought to be the first modern (post-heroic) man, walked a fine line in his adventures, forever tempting fate, but always taking measures to secure his safety.

His ship was sailing by the Isle of the Sirens, enchanting spirit-women whose haunting songs lured sailors to their deaths on the rocky reefs. But Odysseus, being captain of the vessel, felt he was entitled to satisfy his curiosity. So he ordered his crewmen to stuff their ears with wax, but he himself was lashed to the mast, so he could listen to their fatal melodies without causing everyone aboard to perish.

It is said that he fought like a colt in a blizzard that wants to kick down the barn door and run into the snow. He ordered his men to head for shore, but there was not a lip reader in the entire crew. For the rest of his life Odysseus never got that sexy sound out of his head.

Where was I -- oh, yes. So we see that web-wandering is not for everyone. If your job is on the line, and your business is in a struggle to survive, you’d better stuff your ears with wax, or do whatever the online equivalent of paraffin is. 

And if you're the boss and your business is fighting for its life, don’t let your online whims lure your ship onto the rocks.

On the other hand, if you have a few spare moments, you can learn a lot ... just by clicking ... and clicking .... and clicking ...