The Open Matt Project

Response Ability

"Just because someone asks you a question, doesn't mean you have to answer it."
- Theodore Kim, likely quoting someone else

I was sitting in the car this weekend with a friend of mine who was going on, again, about how he doesn't want to get a cell phone. I recognized the tone of someone who was convincing themselves of something that had already been decided and as a good friend, I remained silent.

"I just don't want to be beholden to a little device. I see people all the time, slaves to their ring-tones, grabbing and clutching at their pockets to answer the call. I like being left alone. I like not being available to everyone at all times!"

This is a refrain I've grown used to from people over 40-or-so, and although their observations are largely correct, their conclusions are not. I myself have often watched younger kids act with a kind of symbiosis with their cell phones, communicating on them as if it is a telepathy device rather than a tool. I chalk it up to the ever shrinking world, and the seemingly unavoidable modern undertow of identity dissolution. Maybe that's too much of a mouthful. What I mean is that those who have grown up with cell phones, the internet (and it's chat rooms and IM), and instant-everything are not even aware of the boundaries between themselves and their world, much less disturbed by their own ignorance of them. To an outside observer, an old person, it seems that they are slaves to a bleeping, blinking electronic chain, but to them it is an integral part of their link to their world.

Typical for me, I'm a fence-sitter between these perspectives. I enjoy the benefits of on-demand access to resources. I like being able to call for a cab or pizza whenever I like. I like feeling available for my family and friends, and it's comforting to know that if there were a crisis amongst them I would be easily reachable. I like the distance of instant messenger, for when I want to communicate without devoting 100% of my attention. Yet, I also like my privacy and my independence. So my hesitant reply to my friends monologue was,

"Well, you know, if you do get a cell phone... there is a power button on it."

This has been my usual response to the cellphobic, in large part because it's an elegant technical solution to their primary problem - over-availability. If you don't have a cell phone, you are not reachable away from your land line. So far so good. But, if you have a cell phone and turn it off, you are also not reachable away from your land line. Aha, problem solved! I believe this is the same approach used with uninvited visitors to your home. If the doorbell rings, and you don't want company - you can simply not answer. You're not home!

Stick with me, I'm going places.

While watching Deadwood, a gritty historical western and incidentally one of the best programs I've ever seen on television, I became acutely aware of how characters interacted with each other. Here was an environment almost wholly opposite of today's. Unsolicited communications were potentially lethal mistakes. Privacy was a given, not something that needed requesting - even, and maybe especially, amongst friends. Your business was just that, yours, and as such consideration and discretion were common currency. Note that I am not saying politeness, but rather a natural awareness of the boundaries between oneself and one's peers and the grave stakes one risked with crossing them.

Somewhere, between then and now, a certain shift in social norms has occurred wherein my opening quotation sounds debatably rude. Doesn't it seem impolite to ignore someone's question deliberately? Shouldn't they at least get a noncommittal response? I certainly felt so when I first heard it. It was hard for me to hold still under the weight of a pending question, and the silence after it would hang as heavy as the question itself. But after I while I began to feel out the distinction (or distinguishment) between my duty to the questioner and my duty to myself. Ultimately, as with everyone else, I come first. I would rather choose not to answer than find I have no choice out of mere habit. If I am to answer, I want it to be up to me and not some convention that I had no part in designing.

The difference between being "not home", which is commonly acceptable, and being "unresponsive", which is not, has been derived entirely from the location of the two parties. If you are not home, how could you possibly respond? However, if you are standing right there - how could you not? But in a world with pervasive cell phones, email, IM, and other always-on communications, the question of whether or not you are "home" collides directly into your responsibility to reply.

In the absence of any conventional rules to accommodate for this, I have drawn up my own. The core rule being, my time is mine. This has a number of sub-rules that generally spin-off in the same vein. I can give it to whomever I want, whenever I want. I can waste it. I can spend it on one person without consciously or maliciously taking it away from another. I can leave it unplanned, or meticulously over-schedule it. It's mine to do with what I will.

This may sound harsh or selfish, but it's my observation that this framework is in fact how everyone views it, albeit less consciously. It maps out a healthy section of the terrain that forms the "you" side of the boundary between you and the world. There is no need to feel unfair about staking out your claim, because simultaneously the world is doing the same. As I've said many times before - if you don't set boundaries for yourself, be assured the world will set them for you.

So I'm hoping my friend will get a cell phone, and in old west tradition stake out his claim in the on-demand instant access world by judiciously utilizing the power button and caller ID feature. I'm hoping that the folks who mistake my being contactable for my being available will recognize the signs I've put up and gauge their visits accordingly. Eventually, I look forward to the next generation's even tighter social network, and when I'm asked by my children how I can stand to be so alone, I'll be prepared to quietly smile.

Posted by Matt at April 13, 2004 01:23 PM

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