Friday, November 7, 2008

Private Dialogue In Public..What Are The Boundaries

In last night's episode, both Jim and Dwight recieved some less than stellar job performance reviews. Over the course of the show, it was revealed that Kelly had sabotaged them because they didn't not go to her party in the summer. In the end, Michael sympathized with Kelly's actions, because he too has had trouble getting people to come to his parties.

Throughout the duration of the episode, Jim was in constant contact with Pam, thanks to a handy piece of technology called the Blue Tooth, which enabled them to carry on conversations across vast distances. Although the Blue Tooth proved to be amusing at times, the fact remains that there was no real need for Jim and Pam to be in constant contact with one another. Especially since Jim was at work, it was very inappropriate for him to be carrying on a private conversation all day on company time.

This brings to mind the behaviour of cell phone users, as many people are now willing to engage in detailed private conversations in public. Nowadays it seems that everyone believes that they need to be in constant contact through their mobile devices, sometimes at the expense of being tuned in to what is actually going on around them. People prefer to live in the virtual rather than the physical world. Perhaps at the expense of new experiences and relationships.

Funny Moment of the Week:

When Jim and Dwight were doing a mock sales call under Michael's supervision, and Jim told Dwight over the pretend phone that his name was Bill Butlicker, and Dwight got in trouble for questioning the legitimacy of his name.

1 comment:

jjccjc said...

I also have felt it strange that people are willing to share such personal conversations with strangers listening. I don't know if people mistakenly believe that the device is providing privacy. Perhaps the use of new media has made people believe that things which use to be thought of as private now should be shared with anybody that cah access the same databases.