I scared myself today; not by bungee jumping, cleaning false teeth (long story that one) or checking my bank unbalance. Yesterday, my work email account started to go a bit booga wooga. I was tantalising myself watching the emails coming into my blackberry and not my work inbox. By 5pm everyone in the office was having the same problem and despite doing all sorts of stuff to the server and our IT boffin doing his thang remotely, not an email got through.
I worked from home this morning and again they were a popping into my blackberry but the old in box was as empty. I felt the panic rise; we were waiting for stuff and had to get other stuff out; ok I could use my gmail account and click my claws on the minsicule blackberry but this only provided a bit of a solution. European funding applications, partner organisations depending on stuff getting to them and the hassle of having to send everything with a I am sending this via my gmail account as we are experiencing problems with our system, please reply to......
The problem was fixed at 4pm today but the damage to my nerves was done.
I realised today just how much we depend on email. I was forlorn today and didn't know what to do with myself as most of the documents I was working on and created were either received by email or I needed to send them out by email. Even formal letters tend to be sent as templates as attachments - I probably only send out one letter a week. I had 148 emails in my inbox at 4.20pm this afternoon and of course, I had to look at them all even the ones I had already squinted at on the blackberry.
I am very fussy about sorting and storing my stuff and archiving it but today was a wake up call and left me wondering how I would run my business if it all suddenly went back to letters and faxes. The idea of having to communicate with 15 European partners by letter, fax and telephone does not bear thinking about when I can click 'send' and reach their in boxes in 2 or 3 minutes and also using google groups for discussion forums and document uploads for projects.
When I was an office junior in 1973 a calculator was a luxury and photocopiers and faxes not there yet. My next job had two directors who invested in new technology and we had a computer the size of a transit van and a telex machine with binary tape and electric ibm golfball head typewriters with inbuilt correction tape I thought I was in tomorrow's world. Today was strange but as well as scaring me in terms of how dependent we are on email/internet communication it made me realise that tomorrow's world very soon becomes all our yesterday's.
I worked from home this morning and again they were a popping into my blackberry but the old in box was as empty. I felt the panic rise; we were waiting for stuff and had to get other stuff out; ok I could use my gmail account and click my claws on the minsicule blackberry but this only provided a bit of a solution. European funding applications, partner organisations depending on stuff getting to them and the hassle of having to send everything with a I am sending this via my gmail account as we are experiencing problems with our system, please reply to......
The problem was fixed at 4pm today but the damage to my nerves was done.
I realised today just how much we depend on email. I was forlorn today and didn't know what to do with myself as most of the documents I was working on and created were either received by email or I needed to send them out by email. Even formal letters tend to be sent as templates as attachments - I probably only send out one letter a week. I had 148 emails in my inbox at 4.20pm this afternoon and of course, I had to look at them all even the ones I had already squinted at on the blackberry.
I am very fussy about sorting and storing my stuff and archiving it but today was a wake up call and left me wondering how I would run my business if it all suddenly went back to letters and faxes. The idea of having to communicate with 15 European partners by letter, fax and telephone does not bear thinking about when I can click 'send' and reach their in boxes in 2 or 3 minutes and also using google groups for discussion forums and document uploads for projects.
When I was an office junior in 1973 a calculator was a luxury and photocopiers and faxes not there yet. My next job had two directors who invested in new technology and we had a computer the size of a transit van and a telex machine with binary tape and electric ibm golfball head typewriters with inbuilt correction tape I thought I was in tomorrow's world. Today was strange but as well as scaring me in terms of how dependent we are on email/internet communication it made me realise that tomorrow's world very soon becomes all our yesterday's.
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