I ADMIT I GET TIRED OF MANAGING INFORMATION

I get tired of managing information all the time. It would be nice to
just let go a little more. To go with the flow. I used to have a life
after work. I was paid a salary to keep things organized in the office.
When things were crazy busy it was my job to follow procedures to keep
things moving and in tip-top shape. When things were quiet my partners
encouraged me to stir things up, then to put things back in order before
I'd go home. That's what white collar workers have always done–they use
telephones and computers to manage information, to stir things up and to
put things back in order.

My life got more complicated when I got hooked up at home. I set up a
desktop and started working in the evenings and on weekends. I found I
could straighten out the messes I'd make at work in my free time at
home. I could get a lot more done by extending the office into my time
off. I resisted the laptop thing because I needed some time to think,
and commuting was the only time I had for myself. It seems like I've
always carried a cell phone on the road, for peace of mind. I use it
mainly to keep in touch with my partners and family. I seldom initiate
any business when I'm on the road. I know this goes against the grain. I
do answer work related calls and react when I have to. Mostly I listen
to music and read novels. I do like to talk with my mother when I'm
commuting.

The other day I realized how sick I am of managing information. I feel
like a damned cleric or a librarian. Most of my waking hours are spent
opening and closing files, putting things back in order, hacking away at
the snarl of traffic in my inbox, launching reassuring messages in
response. Staying in touch with people I hardly know. I really thought
my life's work would be more creative. I thought I'd be the one making
the messes–interesting, vital messes. Instead I find I'm merely an
extension of this year's software. I use the latest, most powerful
software as a template for my highly efficient, productive behavior. I'm
consistent, methodical, and orderly. There are loose-ends, but these
loose-ends dangle in the never-never land beyond the control of the
system, the network…somewhere beyond my desktop. I think about these
loose ends when I'm commuting, between the time spent lost in my music,
or in my novels, or talking to my mother.

+ + +

STOP THE INANITY

Stop the inanity, please. I'm being buried with meaningless crap. Crap
generated for no good reason, by people going through the motions.
Either they're under the illusion they're being productive by issuing
personal statements on absolutely everything, or they're convinced
they're actually bigger, more important people, because they're leaving
their mark far and wide.

Those who hold their tongue are soon forgotten. Those who hold their
thoughts will simply be overwhelmed and disappear. People who choose
their words wisely will be buried alive by the indiscriminate
pontificators, those with identities maintained by spewing continuous
personal diatribes on absolutely everything. They issue high volumes of
drivel in order to assert, and maintain a case for, their very
existence.

These self-centred beacons of malignant personality are simply filling a
social vacuum. Enduring long, socially bankrupt hours at their 'work-
stations,' they enjoy a surplus of privacy in their respective remote
locations, but feel a definite need to participate in a kind of
simulated office banter. In this way listserves linking communities-of-
interest simulate highrise office complexes, where co-workers actually
still rub elbows over coffee pots and water coolers while simultaneously
really keeping in touch through e-communication. Remotely networked co-
workers also crave day-to-day contact with each other. In the absence of
daily physical contact, this simulated office banter quickly revs up and
becomes the surrogate display of the group's cohabitation on a specific
network or list. Labour-nets provide the breeding ground for insider-
attitudes, thus promoting the formulation of semi-coherent mission
directives.

There is another side to this simulated, surrogate-office scenario. Many
of the most energetic, totally obsessive personal transmitters garner
energy from their frustration with the banality of their screen- based
'day jobs.' Their outreach is driven by a negative momentum: a virtual
workplace hostility.

These individuals, if they make their living shackled to a keyboard and
computer screen, find themselves perpetually on-line, and available for
comment on absolutely everything. Designers, programmers, writers,
animators, etc., etc., many of them self-employed and telecommuting,
find their loneliness more tolerable if they are reaching out and making
contact with others in domains supplementary to their compensatory
labour.

These peripheral, diversionary exchanges perforate and are feathered
into normal workday routines. Unfortunately such attempts at
interpersonal communication are often systematically pursued and
practiced like advertising or other forms of pedantic, pushy influence.
The last word is never the last word. Like an unsuccessful attempt to
scratch out an itch, the transmission process amounts to nothing more
than a persistent, relentless manifestation of presence, mere proof of
existence, a vaguely self-affirming pulse, bare-bones signifier of
survival… A form of cranky S.O.S., a psychological Mayday…