Weapons of Mass Distraction I

Our wonderful new age tools are swords that cut both ways. On the one hand they make our work and communications easier, they are also tools that can be used against us.

The telephone, once an instrument of connection, has now become a source of distraction. Without our permission, sales forces buy and sell our phone numbers for their lists. Our attention is then distracted by a barrage of calls from people we've never met.

Using telephone soliciting to stay in the game, increasing numbers of charities now call with money requests. There is little doubt that they have suffered losses against aggressive telephone advertising campaigns; yet, unfortunately they tend to join the hit list of unwanted distractions that come though our home phones.

It's hard to focus on chosen tasks in the supposed peace and quiet of home when the telephone is constantly ringing with a steady stream of irrelevant sales calls from coming in at all hours, now from India and the Philippines as well as all over North America.

The telephone solicitors are getting smarter. They've developed tricks to get people to pick up. Once they realized that the call displays were giving their game away, they began to use local numbers that look as if they might actually be someone the telephone subscriber knows.

These calls are invasive and distracting, and yet the mere fact of having a phone makes us unable to escape them. Even if we don't pick up, or don't engage, the damage of unwelcome distraction is done when the telephone rings. Of course the call display also tells us if the call is a welcome distraction from a friend.