I agree with how were encouraged to be big-picture thinkers. With the rate of innovative companies/technologies springing-up, who couldn’t get excited about the future. Nevertheless, employers hire us “impractical sciences” majors (no offense taken. Usually, with a beer in hand, I admit it). Like you stated, employers who are hiring expect you to be brilliant at one facet of marketing. (The expectation is frightening for a guy like me who spends a lot of time in the library studying.
I’ve noticed that most companies value FIT and experience the same. (If you have an open work environment, why would you want someone next to you that’s annoying?) If a candidate possesses both, they’re hired–hooray!

When I met with you, I told you I’m better at social media than most people with mobile/new tech (still broad!) being my “career?” passion. The marketing industry is a mad, mad world I tell ya.

Told you I read your blogs! . Good work.
-Nick

Admittedly, part of the debate of early vs. late adopters and their attitude toward the state of “wired” is the fluency that one has with the technology. When you’re spending much of your energy on the mechanics of a medium (llike the fact that my parents still can’t send a text message without a tutorial), then you’re attending to that, and the message gets less attention. Whereas someone with greated “fluency” can easily shift attention to the digital world and easily shift back. For those with less exposure and skills, that becomes a much more difficult task.

Now, I was never very good at psychology, so correct me if I’m not understanding you, but I think I agree that we’re not capable of functioning at our peak when we’re doing more than one thing at a time. I can buy that. But respectfully, that’s not really what I was getting at. I was getting at this notion of being “wired” in a general sense — that is, frequently using technology to accomplish tasks of various degrees of complexity — somehow detracts from “really living.”

So yes, if I was the kind of person who took an always-on approach to technology — if I literally never stopped using it in any situation — then there are certain things that I would not do as effectively. But that’s not really how the majority of us, even the bleeding-edge tech nerds, use technology. We use it as a supplement to what some may call “really living.” We climb mountains, but we also post the pictures to Facebook. Does the posting of pictures to Facebook detract from the experience of having climbed the mountain? That seems downright backwards to me.

One of the challenges that being constantly “connected” through technology is that it presents a unique opportunity to, essentially, bilocate… be physically present and mindful in one situation, while also being “virtually” present and mindful in another situation happening in the technological sphere. We’ve always been able to be lost in our thoughts, but now we’re actually able to socially interact with others in two different spheres at the same time.

Except we actually can’t.

Large amounts of brain research has show that we as humans simply don’t multitask the way we think we do. We all believe we’re capable of doing more than one thing in the moment, but the research suggests that when we do, we’re doing a poorer job at both because our brains simply haven’t evolved to attend to more than one thing at a time yet (evolution moves at an exponentially slower pace than expansion of technology, after all). And yes, we all think we’re special and the exception to this rule… the research summarily suggests we’re not.

There’s a movement across certain disciplines of psychology (dilectical behavior therapy and mindfulness-based stress reduction, specifically), that center on doing on thing in the moment, doing it fully, and moving on. The strategies are hghly effective for both those who experience symptoms of mental illness as well as those who don’t (myself included).

I certainly don’t judge the quality of someone’s life based on the amount of time they spend on technology, and for some folks with mental illness, it’s been a godsend. But acknowledging the limits of the human brain in what we can be fully present in is an important factor to consider in our “I can do it all” modern lifestyles.

I think we can have a conversation about the relative detriment of luddites without talking about addicts. Addicts suffer from a disease, after all, and are in the vast minority.

And who are you to say that a person’s life isn’t made better by constantly gazing into a smartphone? It is not up to you — or me, for that matter — to judge the quality of another person’s life by your standards alone. That “addict,” as you say, may well choose to interact with the world via digital media because that’s what makes him happy. And if he’s not harming anyone or putting others at risk, then who are we to say he’s doing something wrong?