Today at work, our power went out. It was very surreal, it took everyone
on the floor 20 seconds to emerge from our personal media cocoons and
wander out into the hallways where paths cross. By the emergency lights we
found ourselves, talking quietly, almost reverently in the darkened
building. Forty five minutes is quite a long time for the power to be out,
especially in a software tech company. News from the outside indicated
that even our other buildings each a couple blocks away had no power. The
one down on machinery row apparently didn’t even have the phone service
that we retained. Later we would learn that more than just a couple
blocks were out, and that stoplights were out up and down the main
stretch.


I find it amazing how very short our collective attention span has
become. It became instant boredom without a steady influx of little
clicks, beeps and whirls we usually are surrounded by. It kinda makes you
wonder about the people you work with a little. There is a noted
difficulty in communication normally, I never thought that was something
inherent in our company. We really don’t know each other well enough. Who
would have thought our chit-chat skills had become so rusty. In a
company, in a community, in a culture where speed and vastness of
communication has become readily available, have we forgotten how to
conduct ourselves away from these screens? Sometimes, I know I
have. Sometimes I forget that I’m talking to a person who has a zillion
things going on in their lives too, while I’m busy querying them in a
manner to yield the answer I require in the most expedient fashion.



When the lights came back on, within seconds, mid sentence, the little
conversations which had begun lapsed, and we wandered back to our offices
like I/O zombies.



It’s a shame, really.


Stacie