I help people navigate health and technology.
When I saw this latest data set, I flashed on the phrase “À la recherche du temps perdu” which roughly translates as “In search of lost time” or “Remembrance of things past” (a seven-volume novel by Marcel Proust that I never did finish reading). Look how much time we have collectively “lost” and look at what we have gained.
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Okay, I give up. What lost, what gained? Maybe I’m being too engineer-literal – the graphs don’t show how MUCH time was spent, just how many people do something, right?
And by “gained” I guess you mean how much we’re now able to do?
(My secretly intrigued thing-to-watch, in the graphs, is the seeming parallel between health information and bank account.)
Sorry if the reference is obscure. I always loved how that one phrase in French had two different meanings and was thinking about how some people will look at these findings and say, “What a lot of lost time! People shouldn’t spend so much time texting, taking pictures, etc.” Others will see the opposite, “Look how far we’ve come and what opportunities we’ve grabbed for engagement! The past is behind us and we are all going to be better connected now.”
:-)…. only now did I note that “Remembrance of things past” [gone, in time past] could be a double-entendre of “In search of [that which we’ve] lost [in] time.”
And if I take off my snark-nit hat (re “it doesn’t say how much time”), sure, I know people talk about how much time we-all put into our devices.
Do you have splits of this for smartphone vs dumbphone mobile?
Fun! Yes, I do, as a matter of fact:
Take a picture: 98% of smartphoners vs. 63% other types of cell phone owners (not ready to call them “dumbphones”)
Send/receive text messages: 96% vs. 62%
Access internet: 93% vs.14%
Send/receive email: 84% vs. 10%
Look for health/medical info: 52% vs. 6% (one of the Mobile Health 2012 report findings)
Check your bank balance: 48% vs. 8%
The above is from Pew Internet’s Aug-Sept 2012 survey.
I somehow injured my back on Sunday and was forced to watch TV all day instead of enjoying the sunshine, but a silver lining is that I caught the movie “The Da Vinci Code,” which I’d never seen. It came out in 2006 and featured a key moment on a London bus when the character played by Audrey Tautou borrows a young guy’s phone to search online for information about Sir Isaac Newton. I haven’t read the book, which came out in 2003, but it was a twist that was possible in 2003. Now Tom Hanks would have a smartphone, of course.
If you’re into this then/now/future stuff, my boss Lee Rainie and his co-author Barry Wellman devoted a chapter of their book, Networked, to re-imagining the plot of Romeo & Juliet as if the two had mobile phones:
http://networked.pewinternet.org/2012/07/09/if-romeo-and-juliet-had-mobile-phones/
(My fingers and this blog are not getting along well – I started a reply about the Romeo & Juliet thing, had a question, clicked its link, and lost my draft. Dumbo!)
What I was saying: The “R&J with today’s teens” idea made my skin crawl – 98% probability of dopiness. *Except* if Lee had his name associated with it, the probability goes to zero. 🙂 So I couldn’t resist. And as I read, I was all, like, “Yes! Yes!” (Sorry, I got teen-y.)
I urge readers to click that link and read the post, which contains the full text of the article. GREAT teaching about what’s newly possible today, and what a difference it can make. And that’s the kind of thing that opens minds, so I’m sure I’ll be citing it in my speeches.
Aside from the phone-specific differences, I was grabbed by the discussion of how networking itself is changing things: “wherefore [why] art thou Romeo? … the precursor of networked individualism as Juliet wonders why Romeo, a Montague, is moving beyond group boundaries to woo her, a Capulet.* – Holy crap – who ever noticed that??
SPM‘s definition of participatory medicine is that networked patients are shifting from being mere passengers to responsible drivers of their health. Co-founder Gilles Frydman was adamant that networking was an essential part of the definition. I personally still think an engaged patient/clinician partnership is sufficient to constitute “PM,” but I’m finally starting to see what a difference networking makes, and I have to wonder: is it in fact possible for a patient to be a “responsible driver of [one’s] health” (again from the PM definition) without the connections a network offers?