[jsfg_cinti] No time off? It's tech giants' fault

Here is an interesting story about the blurring of work time and personal time 
in the future.  Will you next job fit this description?
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Story URL: 
http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/technology/maney/2004-07-20-time_x.htm
             
No time off? It's tech giants' fault
by Kevin Maney, USA TODAY
Posted 7/20/2004 10:13 PM     
Updated 7/20/2004 10:16 PM
            
So you're on the beach. The kids are burying themselves in the sand, and you 
have a Thermos of margaritas nearby. Beautiful bare bodies stroll past, and 
you're furiously jabbing your thumbs into Tic Tac-size BlackBerry keys, 
wirelessly ripping that report from Jones.
Which is about when your spouse calls you a sick, obsessive work-o-maniac and 
demands you put that thing away.
           
Should you feel bad? 
            
Nah. Not at all! In fact, such behavior is part of a big, important trend 
driving the strategy of all kinds of companies, including Motorola, Intel and 
General Motors. If you stopped, where would that leave them?
           
Motorola calls this trend the "blurring of life segments." It means there is a 
diminishing difference between work and play. It also means widening your range 
of activities in any one place ? office, home, car, Starbucks, Beanzo's Sports 
Bar, a blanket on Cape Cod, whatever.
           
Of course, this has been going on for a while, goaded by technology. Remember 
when only doctors got paged about work in the middle of a party? Or when it was 
pretty much impossible to shop for a new car while sitting at an office desk? 
             
But only now are the overlapping ripples growing into a tsunami. 
...
Tack onto that one other trend: globalization. Not long ago, most of the people 
you needed to work with probably resided in the same time zone. Today, a 
company in Memphis might be outsourcing work to India and selling in Poland, 
and nobody in the equation has the same office hours. It means evening e-mail 
and 5 a.m. phone calls while still in jammies.
             
All in all, the blurring will not stop, perhaps ultimately until everybody does 
just about anything anywhere. The one consolation will be that every gadget 
will still come with an off button.
              
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