Rise. Shine. Check E-Mail.
By Harry McCracken | Monday, August 10, 2009 at 9:34 am
The New York Times has noticed a trend that’s been going on for…well, for decades, probably, but it’s now entirely mainstream: Folks sometimes leap online first thing in the morning, before they’ve so much as brushed their teeth. (Back in the 1990s at the height of AOL addiction, I’m sure plenty of people started their day by checking to see if They Had Mail; as a high school student in the late 1970s and early 1980s, I sometimes took the idea to its logical conclusion by staying up all night on the computer, so there was no waking up involved the next morning.)
Here’s today’s T-Poll–I’m refusing to take this one myself, but you can probably guess what my answer would be…
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On Top of Splashtop » Blog Archive » Rise. Shine. Check E-Mail. Says:
August 11th, 2009 at 3:50 pm[…] borrowed the headline from Technologizer, where Harry McCracken is running a poll to see how quickly people get online in the morning. At […]
August 10th, 2009 at 9:52 am
I subscribe to a lot of push e-mail services like New York Times, Washington Post, Salon.com, Politico.com, etc. so my Inbox is at its fullest in the morning. So besides the Merc that lands on my doorstep (It’s so thin, if it were a person, you’d order it forced-fed through an IV) I read those online news sources to start my day. But technically, the sequence is wake up, walk dog, pour coffee, log in.
August 10th, 2009 at 11:01 am
I get up, pick up my iPhone and check stocks, weather and maybe a quick look at Twitter. Then I do some personal maintenance, fetch the newspapers from the driveway and boot up the computer.
August 10th, 2009 at 12:02 pm
I have to walk to the living room to get to my computer and get my bowl of cheerios while it’s booting up so technically can’t be the first — but it certainly feels that way.
August 10th, 2009 at 6:03 pm
I telecommute, so not only am I constantly feet away from my office, but I sleep with my laptop at the edge of my bed. I don’t even wait until I wake up on the morning. I’ve been known to frequently wake up every couple of hours and pop open the laptop to check my email and VPN-in to ensure everything is okay at the office, whether it’s a work day or not.
Some people make a big deal about it, but I don’t see the concern. When I was a kid, I would wake up and the first thing my grandfather and I would do before he set off for work in the morning was share a newspaper over breakfast. Now, I’m an adult and I work for a living and I love my job, so I need to stay connected and informed and jump on top of any emergencies both for my sake and those of my colleagues and clients.
If you hate your job and your career, hitting your machine first thing in the morning may be an unwanted addiction or tethering and the secret luddite in you may want to run away, but for me it’s a vital tool that empowers me to do what I do and allows me greater convenience than I would otherwise have.
August 11th, 2009 at 11:42 am
It’s coffee, the local TV news, maybe a recorded show from the previous night, SS&S, THEN it’s time to wake up the computer (which may occupy me for hours).