Blackberrys

[maplesyrup]

Blackberrys

A non-user — not to be confused with a non-believer — keeps asking BlackBerry owners about them. Do they indeed make for better decisions?

It depends. They do apparently help users from being blindsided. If you are a VIP, as most BlackBerry owners presume themselves to be, correctly or otherwise, they give you a heads-up.

BlackBerrys epitomize speed. Need to know something now, or in the next five minutes? Get on that BlackBerry. Need to ask a question, or to scan your press clippings? Go BlackBerry. Want to be in the loop? Afraid of being left out? Go BlackBerry.

The BlackBerry perfectly symbolized Mr. Martin's approach to governing: messaging everywhere, preoccupied with spin, worried about the next newscast, caught up in tactics, everything an urgent priority, busy, busy, busy.

If this group's addiction to BlackBerrys raises any question, it is: Do BlackBerrys allow the urgent to push out the important? It often appeared that people were so busy communicating and transacting in Mr. Martin's Ottawa that they lost sight of longer-term objectives. They, fingers flying across the BlackBerry keyboard, reflected the triumph of tactics over strategy, of impulse and instinct over rumination.

It's hard, after all, to reflect when your nose is buried in a BlackBerry half the day, or to realize that many of those messages being received and delivered really wouldn't look all that important if a day passed without a response.

Maybe, in fairness, the information world is so swift these days that VIPs need to be abreast immediately of everything, lest a rival gain an advantage. Certainly, the political parties thought so in the recent campaign, what with their war rooms tracking opponents' every utterance and firing off umpteen responses every day.

Most of those unwillingly on the receiving end of this outpouring of hourly propaganda wore out the index finger on one hand pushing the delete button. When the propaganda war ended, it was clear that nobody had won, although everyone was exhausted.

One wonders how Mackenzie King would have survived in the BlackBerry world. Or Sir John A. Macdonald, who deservedly earned the nickname Old Tomorrow.

They displayed an uncanny sense of political timing, or at least the sense of timing that their age allowed. They knew when to delay and how to fudge. They understood, after all their years in politics, how to sort out the important from the urgent.

Jean Chrétien had some of that instinct, whatever you thought of him. His instinct suggested that today's headlines usually fizzle into inconsequence after a day or two.

BlackBerrys, it would seem, are brilliant at keeping people informed. The more informed a person, the greater the chance of an intelligent decision. At least, that is the theory.

Thus far in Mr. Martin's Ottawa, the theory rests unproven, although frequently asserted.

So does anyone here have one, or is someone here thinking about getting one? Why are you getting one?What has your experience been like? Are they costly?

[noelandmero]

I had one and got rid of it. I got rid of it because unless for two reasons, one it runs on the GSM network which means once you leave a major center it is an expensive paper wieght and two when you are in a major center you are 100% accesible to all forms of communication and it felt like the thing never quit going off.

[kimmy]

(does anybody who read that article really think that the writer was really talking about Blackberries?)

I think that it is just a fact of life. Maybe life used to be different in the past, but now everything happens fast. Instant communications, instant video, instant coverage. Anything that happens anywhere can be on your TV or on the Internet within minutes. People are overloaded with information, and they are becoming trained to assess information in the blink of an eye to decide whether it is important to them or not. That is why politicians speak in soundbites now instead of talking in ideas. They know that the evening news doesn't have time for ideas, just soundbites. So they give them soundbites. Did everybody notice that Team Martin adopted Dubya Bush's idea of putting their messages on the backdrops behind Martin as he was speaking? Even if you change the channel without listening to what Martin is saying, you still get his message- "Shorter Waiting Times" for instance. They are all adapting their styles to instant information. And I think the article is saying that we are too focused on what's immediate and what's eye-grabby and not paying enough attention to real substance anymore. It is just how things happen now.

-kimmy