When push becomes too much
The first to raise his hand in class when the question is asked, “would you be willing to try this new feature?”, was always followed by a young man that looks identical to me. Alright I confess it was me and this comes as no surprise to you if you know me. Technology, especially communications, shares the limited space in my body readily flowing through my veins. When the idea of having notifications pushed to me in realtime was introduced I was one of the first on block to get in line to sign my life away.
As the years have passed by the notion of realtime seems far less important to me. After reading the article regarding Google adding new push notifications to their iPhone app written by the wonderful folks at ReadWriteWeb I realized how unimportant realtime notifications are 99% of the time. Sure, we live in the digital age but if someone or something requires my immediate attention the best way to get in touch is and will always be a phone call or face to face meeting.
Ask yourself this question. How many hours a week do you waste staring at your device waiting for the next notification? The anticipation alone causes us to become more stressed and less focused on the real task at hand. When is push too much?
The gates are open.
You’ve got a new email! Holy smokes am I going to get pinged a lot if I turn on the newly announced Gmail and Google Calendar push notifications on the Google Mobile iPhone app. Google just announced the new feature and it’s a logical one, but it also seems like a throw-back to a simpler time when push notification for any and every email made sense.
