The New Busy

I received an email from a friend which had an automated note/advertisement at the bottom of the page from the email provider. It referred to "The New Busy," suggesting that this company could ease the user's capacity to deal with email, social networking, chats, etc. It got me thinking about the way most of us are tied to computers and cell phones. The "new busy" seems to mean that we are never out of contact for long, that "office hours" are in effect a thing of the past, that socializing and business-related communications frequently overlap.

It makes me wonder, though, if our busy-ness is that much more productive than we were before these communication tools were prevalent. With the world at our fingertips, literally, the ability to share information, opinions, artistic creations is practically unlimited. Yet the "new busy" may just be a ramped-up version of the old busy. Are we being more creative, more aware, more sensitive? Or are we just bouncing from one email/text/call/conference to another like the proverbial pinball? Are we finding ourselves more closely knit in community, or has our definition of community expanded so greatly as to be unrecognizable? These are practical questions for employers/employees/entrepreneurs/educators, but they are also questions for those seeking to live out the Christian mandates to love God and neighbor. How does the "new busy" effect our witness for Christ?