Is Technology Always Useful for Local Businesses?

Fads may or may not work, but it matters when and how to use them.

I looked at retail stores who ignored procedures that consistently worked for novelty's sake. In the past, Levi's jeans and Borders booksellers had earpiece headsets for employees to remotely communicate. In an office building with multiple business departments, especially one larger in size, this can make more sense. Think of it this way:

Imagine a Bluetooth-type solution for businesses (businesses that have ALWAYS thrived for years on face-to-face contact) as if the local Bluetooth line(s) were like the acoustics of an arena-rock concert.

If you have one really loud concert where the walls are a lot closer together, the speakers are bigger, and there are a lot more people you'll get a thicker wall of noise. The effect of a wall of sound might seem cooler, because of the sensations that the sound-waves of the amps course through one's body or the depth of literally being right in there with the music flooding the room. However, beyond the noise and actually "feeling the music" it's like a mono compared to a stereo track. (An easy way to identify which kinds of audio are mono or stereo is to listen for the bass. Usually bass is mixed last for commercial releases. A lot of commercial releases take this priority in how they mix the channels for CDs released in the United States: 1st: Vocals, 2nd: Guitar, 3rd: Drums/Percussion, 4th and/or last: Bass. I burned an official NIN remix [not a fan remix] that was obviously mixed in stereo or for more than one channel. The bass was HOT! The chirping samples were as sharp as four or five thick drizzles of rain spatting on my car windshield or the sound of extremely thick and damp 6' tall grass rustling in the jungle right up against your ear. It was probably mixed for two or three levels up above "Stereo" quality. [The higher you go in audio quality, the more and more speakers you have for each channel/layer. It's like the audio equivalent of more and more dots on your TV giving higher quality. (High-Def TV is a setting with the most dots that compose a picture; hence the most life-likeness of the televised images.)])

Anyway, if you have a small 50-75 square foot business, and you have 15-20 employees altogether on a shift talking through Bluetooth headsets (including managerial employees) it's like using a "mono" audio setting. That effect is created metaphorically if not literally. Even if the lines don't get crossed like a bad cell-phone signal, there's still the concept of fidgeting with voice-commands/buttons on the Bluetooth. The practical application of the hardware says that face-to-face communication that works is obsolete. You have a tool that's only going to be abused as much as an IM application by employees, because it's there and it was endorsed for nothing but wasting time and energy. (There are employees out there that actually have to ask their bosses what the "On" switch means... more than once. This is true.) The manufacturer only ends up with what I'd call The Attention Deficit Disorder Business Model (in which everything is moving so fast and everything of no concern has such great concern that nothing useful is being done in that retailer). Soon the manager/owner can't function managerially because they act the same way that everyone else would act if they suddenly had 15-20 voices in their head constantly complaining, asking questions, saying obtuse things, or asking for PTO hours.

If you spread the Bluetooths to a larger company there would be less of that effect because more employees could talk directly to the channels that they require to speak with as a matter of convenience instead of novelty. The commercial Bluetooth headsets might still cause a distraction, though, for person-to-person contact. This can gradually decrease social skills within the workplace and then lead to lack of social skills outside of the workplace.

The point is to stick to what is useful. Sometimes it is good to learn from mistakes though. Typically I do more than is necessary to solve a problem that I am not familiar with, only to ditch what is unecessary much later. Then I know what the essentials are and get started on those parts of a specific task. I'm reminded of a quote from Gene Simmons, bassist of KISS: "One simple rib-crushing bass-chord can be a lot more powerful than performing 'Flight Of The Bumblebee' on a guitar solo." This quote can be a reminder to businesses on the power of minimizing business procedures down to the essential protocols.