A Society Without Boundaries is Wrought With Problems
Reach out and touch someone. Anyone. Anywhere. At any time. The
news media does it. The President (allegedly) does it. And so do
the American people. The Clinton Zippergate crisis is emblematic
of a trend that has been evolving over the past few years-the disappearance
of boundaries in our lives.
Think about it. There used to be a clear distinction between home
and work, day and night, mine and yours, public and private, right
and wrong. Now it seems that we've abandoned these distinctions
for the sake of the bottom line, instant gratification, and an insatiable
need to know.
We decry the loss of privacy even as we share our most intimate
secrets with strangers in front of a TV camera. We excoriate the
media, yet continue to tune into the 11:00 local news broadcasts
where fact and fiction are so closely intertwined that the lead
story is often a backstage look at the network series immediately
preceding the broadcast. Is it any wonder that our priorities are
so skewed that we concentrate on Presidential peccadillos and ignore
the looming Iraqi crisis that could soon send our sons off to war?
A world without boundaries can disorient even the most centered
among us. The seasons unfold as scheduled, but we-encased in our
tinted-glass, climatized offices-hardly notice. Indeed, the natural
order seems reversed as we spend our summers shivering in the air
conditioning and our winters baking in the heat. And the bottom
line is eroding the distinction between day and night. Like The
Blob, the work day has oozed into the crevices of our home lives,
rendering the term "work day" oxymoronic. 9 to 5 has metamorphosed
into 24 x 7. With the proliferation of beepers, cell phones, and
computers, our employers can reach out and touch us 24-hours a day.
We start our work at the office, email it home to ourselves, work
on it at night, then email it back to the office. We're connected
to ourselves by an electronic umbilical cord. There used to be a
distinction between home and office. Now "home office"
is a way of life instead of an oxymoron.
And it's not just our bosses who expect us to be on call. Just
look at how many people carry beepers. In the past only doctors
wore them; now you see them clipped to homemakers, sanitation engineers,
and children. Tomorrow they'll probably be hanging from the collars
of domesticated animals. Armed with our beepers and cell phones,
we perceive everything as an emergency, from a heart attack to a
dinner date to a grocery list. In a world measured by MIPS and nanoseconds,
we expect no delay between the wanting and the receiving.
How can we focus on what's important when information is pushed
onto our computer screens, and words bump into each other on the
page (SmithKline, WebCrawler) undeterred by spaces; or they are
dot.commed together into unholy matrimony? How can we keep our private
lives private when employers can monitor our phone calls and anyone
with the right password could conceivably access our medical and
financial records and sell them to the highest bidder? Perhaps our
desire to know the sordid secrets of the rich and famous is a reaction
to our own loss of self.
In a world with no boundaries, we can scratch any time we itch.
Craving a Twinkie at 3:00 a.m.? Ease on down to the 24-hour mini-mart.
Want companionship at 4:00 a.m.? Log into a chat room or download
an X-rated photo. Want revenge? Wiretap a friend.
In a world without borders, everyone steps over the line. Perhaps
we should take a lesson from the border guards in the Southwest
who attempt to filter out illegal immigrants, limiting entry to
those who have earned the right. First, we need to redefine some
of the eradicated boundaries in our lives, and then we must police
them to filter out unwanted incursions. Let's admit that our indispensability
is an illusion and turn off our beepers and cell phones after hours.
Let's learn to distinguish between information and entertainment
and to recognize that although "infotainment" is entertaining,
it's not terribly informative. And finally, let's remember that
everyone's entitled to a private life, and when we reach out and
touch people, even with the best of intentions, we could destroy
their lives forever.
Natalie Zellat Dyen
nat.dyen@verizon.net
  
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