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"...The reason is simple. The Christmas break is now the only time of year when you can actually mentally stop. Mobile devices and international time zones mean that we are now all shackled to instant communication and that is not healthy..."

Maybe (?)

Cast your minds back to Star Wars episode V “The Empire Strikes Back”, whereby is the proposition that a communicator (Lando’s right hand man Lobot) has a belt of mobile phones strapped around his head to be in constant telecommunication, while Lando (depending on Lobot) swaggers around unabated in mere cotton.

One has to ask oneself: do I want to be Lobot; or do I want to be Lando?

I would personally find greater comfort in the latter, how about others? I bet some of us would cheekily rather lean in the other direction, with the former...

I did zilch social networking during all office work (and in-between) up until my last permanent job in 2008, but admit a little during 2011 (outwith office hours though) as I knew it was a very short term fill-in post. I may be wrong, but I get the impression that it's been largely the Lobot types that have hung onto their jobs despite the recession’s mass redundancies. If so, then why? It’s also rather unnerving when trying to change in uni communal changing rooms (circa mid 2000s onward) and invariably a veritable Lobot comes to sit nearby and points its lens in your direction no matter what time of day with no interest in changing. I don’t really mind any likewise - let’s call ‘em - Lobots when commuting to Edinburgh on train; or invariably when going up on a Cineworld lift in Europe’s tallest multiscreen tower, except in the back of my mind is always the Newsround article (scaremongering/bluffing perhaps) that said overuse [esp. in metal container (?)] would form lumps in your head like the speci-man interviewed, which has never really been proved/disproved. Old hat I know, albeit we seemed to have not erred on the side of caution. Obviously the youngsters who invariably begin to communicate once into the lift have likely not seen that old Newsround article, but then again neither perhaps have the commuting adult Lobots. Would they think twice on the contrary, or have some already called Newsround’s bluff etc.; or are we perhaps simply just Lobot orientated at heart in search for Landos to sidekick?

If the Lobot thing or possibility does actually transpire in the future, perhaps that’ll be enough to throw people off the path for good and restore the concept ‘to err on the side of caution’.

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