Comments on: On Facebook and wasting time

By: Stephen Smoliar

Stephen Smoliar — Thu, 02 Aug 2007 18:28:53 +0000

I found the Ajaxian account of Dvorak a better read than the original; but I think we have to be careful with that noun “value.” The bubble definition from Wikipedia cited by Ajaxian is based on a theoretical concept of “intrinsic value” from a paper published in 1993; and I am not sure how much of that theoretical perspective has endured the subsequent fifteen years. The think the last bubble burst because most of the players did not know how to set realistic price points, and that can certainly happen again in Web 2.0. You can only go so far putting a price on promises and expecting everyone else to pay that price!

By: John Dodds

John Dodds — Thu, 02 Aug 2007 17:55:40 +0000

Agreed – I was just trying to make the point that because people are deemed objectively to waste time (as in your excel audit) with a web 2.0 application, it is no justification to condemn that application. The weakness is the people not the availability of the potentially useful application.

By: Nick Kings

Nick Kings — Thu, 02 Aug 2007 14:55:03 +0000

Interesting to see that that Web2 backlash has started to build, with people wondering when all the momentum will start to deliver “value”:

See http://ajaxian.com/archives/bubble-20 and http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1895,2164136,00.asp

By: Stephen Smoliar

Stephen Smoliar — Thu, 02 Aug 2007 14:54:32 +0000

Jon, I can remember when IBM saw no reason to install an electronic mail system because “employees would only use it to complain about their managers.” Now they have built meeting spaces in Second Life! My guess is that, instead of worrying about what people say, management just arranges to monitor it all!

By: Alice Bachini-Smith

Alice Bachini-Smith — Thu, 02 Aug 2007 14:23:19 +0000

It encourages me especially for my children’s future working lives to read that one of today’s working trends is that people in ordinary jobs with more responsibility for their own time, which represents more trust and more (to my mind) civilised employer-employee relationships.

http://blog.penelopetrunk.com/2007/05/22/twentysomething-best-buy-gets-it-stop-watching-the-clock/

The main shift seems to be that people are being paid for their work instead of their time, in jobs where their work can be measured. My husband works at home (for IBM) over the net about half the week, but on specific projects, time is not an issue. Getting things done is.

Although some people’s work involves a large amount of researching and creativity-building activities that may not obviously be part of a specific project, surely there is some way to observe their achievements other than whether their time was appropriately filled- otherwise it would be impossible for anyone’s career to be distinguished from anyone else’s. So not only is “time-wasting” impossible to define, it doesn’t matter. If someone is coming up with amazing ideas that are working, where they came from is nobody else’s business.

Having said that, we all hate the feeling of wasting our own time- I think people naturally approach new environments like Facebook with a certain amount of scepticism, and feel a bit reluctant to get involved when they see how much work is required. But benefit involves risk. There seems to be a shift from investing money in our businesses etc towards investing time instead, on all levels.

By: Henry

Henry — Thu, 02 Aug 2007 14:06:11 +0000

Every new social thing at last will be named as wasting time. Only making money never will be wasting time.

By: Jon Collins

Jon Collins — Thu, 02 Aug 2007 11:32:26 +0000

… and of course, the Internet was originally seen as the biggest time water of them all…

By: JP

JP — Thu, 02 Aug 2007 10:31:22 +0000

Agree. But I think Stephen’s comments and David’s continuation are both valid. What one person deems a waste of time another may claim as immensely valuable, and we have to place it in the context of where and how value is generated.

As von Braun said “Research is what I’m doing when I don’t know what I’m doing”

By: John Dodds

John Dodds — Thu, 02 Aug 2007 10:21:47 +0000

People waste time – what they use to waste time is less germane to that problem than the fact that they do.

By: david cushman

david cushman — Thu, 02 Aug 2007 08:03:55 +0000

There are those who see discovery and exploration as a waste of time (they are often too goal oriented – target fixated to use the parlance of advanced motorcycle riding…) and those who trust that new value will emerge.
Consider how some firms prevent their employees from even using google (for the same ‘waste of time’ reason.
I posted about this a short while ago: http://fasterfuture.blogspot.com/2007/05/bosses-who-ban-out-of-touch-and-now-out.html