If it's in the News, it's in our Polls. Public opinion polling since 2003.

POLITICAL COMMENTARY

Data Debris and the Time of Our Lives

A Commentary by Froma Harrop

An elderly friend I'll call Jeff perfectly summed up the stress of digital living. He'd read an article on the race by cyber-merchants to get online purchases into consumers' hands within an hour of their pushing the "place your order" button. One such service, eBay Now, has its own app enabling shoppers to follow the delivery people as they bike or drive to their address.

"More miscellaneous information than you need" is how Jeff described the tracking feature, while conceding, "This country is good at delivering stuff."

Jeff is not a creature of the digital age. He writes on a computer and sends email, but that's it. He is content to read today's news in tomorrow's newspaper. The one kind of information he wants right away is the weather, which he gets on the radio. Though he misses out on some of the wonderful digital conveniences, he also avoids the enormous time-wasters marketed in the name of expedience.

I turn on my television, and up comes the message, "Do not unplug your Apple TV while updating." I urge Jeff to be patient, to which he chimes in, "You never had to do that with radio."

To me, managing gadgets, apps and their updates is worth the hassle. The technology lets me tightly regulate my media consumption for quality and minimal commercial interruptions. But Jeff is right. There is a price to pay for all this "control," and the various subscription fees are the least of it.

Go back to the e-commerce sites offering super-fast delivery. Amazon.com was a pioneer in this effort, building 40 huge warehouses in the United States. These "fulfillment centers" store merchandise near millions of customers, enabling Amazon to provide same-day delivery on many items. EBay is trying to go Amazon one better with same-hour delivery.

When all goes well, instant delivery may seem a welcome amenity. But all doesn't always go well. Moving physical things to physical customers is not the same as taking orders in cyberspace and beaming them to warehouses.

In the corporeal world, tornadoes happen. Traffic happens. The "valet" (eBay Now's name for the delivery guy) gets lost. Tires go flat. Or a surge in demand causes a valet shortage. For many customers, a two-hour or six-hour wait poses no more hardship than the one-hour kind. But suppose you've ordered a new ink cartridge because your printer at work just ran out. In olden times, you'd have stored a replacement in the closet. With promises of immediate delivery, you stopped doing that.

Suppose you shopped online for Christmas presents two days before, assuming rapid delivery. You never imagined that Mother Nature would throw a wrench in the computerized distribution system by staging a blizzard outside Chicago, but she does.

And so, added to the to-do list of writing cards, answering invites and finding the cookie recipe is tracking the whereabouts of something you could have bought a month ago. What was supposed to be a great convenience simply adds more data debris to the stressful pile clogging your head.

What we see as timesaving technology is often just time speed-up. If you had ordered that sweater three weeks ago, chances are you wouldn't give a hoot what detained the delivery truck at that very moment. And if it came in the wrong size, big deal. You'd return it for the right size.

Jeff, as you might imagine, shops at downtown stores. He does that undistracted by miscellaneous information dinging at him from a cellphone, which he doesn't have.

"We have to enjoy life," as Jeff philosophizes. "We can't live on the Penn Central timetable."

Follow Froma Harrop on Twitter @FromaHarrop. She can be reached at fharrop@gmail.com

COPYRIGHT 2013 CREATORS.COM

See Other Political Commentary

See Other Commentaries by Froma Harrop.

Views expressed in this column are those of the author, not those of Rasmussen Reports. Comments about this content should be directed to the author or syndicate.

Rasmussen Reports is a media company specializing in the collection, publication and distribution of public opinion information.

We conduct public opinion polls on a variety of topics to inform our audience on events in the news and other topics of interest. To ensure editorial control and independence, we pay for the polls ourselves and generate revenue through the sale of subscriptions, sponsorships, and advertising. Nightly polling on politics, business and lifestyle topics provides the content to update the Rasmussen Reports web site many times each day. If it's in the news, it's in our polls. Additionally, the data drives a daily update newsletter and various media outlets across the country.

Some information, including the Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll and commentaries are available for free to the general public. Subscriptions are available for $4.95 a month or 34.95 a year that provide subscribers with exclusive access to more than 20 stories per week on upcoming elections, consumer confidence, and issues that affect us all. For those who are really into the numbers, Platinum Members can review demographic crosstabs and a full history of our data.

To learn more about our methodology, click here.