Tuesday, July 15, 2008

Your vacation choice- Explorer? or Safari?


Vacation: va·ca·tion n
1. a scheduled period during which the activities of courts, schools, or other regular businesses are suspended
2. a period of time devoted to rest, travel, or recreation
3. an act or an instance or vacating something


I ask myself if vacation is really vacation anymore due to our, uh-hem, exciting and busy new media…

I am currently in the process of driving back to St. Louis from Hilton Head, South Carolina, where I took 5 days of vacation with a few friends.

Round Trip Stat- 1800 miles and about 26 hours of driving

Unfortunately, I have a hard time believing that work and school are ever really suspended anymore, and even if we did in fact rest, and vacate St. Louis—this new virtual, and mobile world still follows us.

It is our omnipresent shadow now. And almost our crutch. We cannot stand in darkness or on our own.

I was pleased to find that cell reception was poor in the house, somewhat saving ourselves from ourselves. However, there were still some hotspots if you wandered around to find them. To add, the house was equipped with wi-fi, ensuring that at any moment we were in the home- one computer was alive and processing- whether it was facilitating online poker, the following of a baseball game in Philly, or the checking of work email, etc.

We all love our wireless world, right?

And we can’t imagine what we did before it.

What would I have done if I had not worked on homework? Or corresponded with work folk? Or caught the game, play-by-play?

Maybe, I would have actually vacated.

I think as IMC practitioners, we must not completely and excitedly exploit the VACATION. And I fear in many ways, we are working hard to do so.

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