Visiting offline

"A typical information worker who sits at a computer all day turns to his e-mail program more than 50 times and uses instant messaging 77 times, according to one measure by RescueTime, a company that analyzes computer habits. The company, which draws its data from 40,000 people who have tracking software on their computers, found that on average the worker also stops at 40 Web sites over the course of the day.

The fractured attention comes at a cost. In the United States, more than $650 billion a year in productivity is lost because of unnecessary interruptions, predominately mundane matters, according to Basex. The firm says that a big chunk of that cost comes from the time it takes people to recover from an interruption and get back to work."






So now the companies (see link) who helped create easy access to email, who helped create emails, for Pete's sake, are trying to help those of us who spend way too many minutes surfing the Internet break our addiction.

Not because it's an addiction, apparently. Because workers can be more productive when they focus on a task, instead of the task and the message and the email and the phone call...crazy busy isn't productively busy.



How do I know that? I found it out while avoiding writing my sermon.

Sunday afternoon our Internet and cable stopped working. As some of you know, it's hard to lose a connection to the virtual world-a world that seems so real.

At any rate, a Comcast fellow came out this morning and analyzed our problem. Turned out that a young man helping me with a weed-whacker in the garden cut the cable-something I suspected, but about which I could do nothing (except call for help).

Tomorrow I am going back to the Bennison trial, which is supposed to conclude with the bishop in the chair and then closing arguments.

At issue is whether Bennison hid his brother John' sexual abuse of a minor in the 1970s.

The trial doesn't put Bishop Bennison in a good light. But it's also an indictment of other Episcopal clergy-particularly bishops. They knew about John Bennison's abuse and reinstated him to the clergy. So many people high up in the church knew about John-common sense would have led them to ask how whether Charles knew.

It is tragic that the victim's family again and again tried to find closure and healing in a denomination where no one, as far as one can tell, had the courage to own their responsibility.

Yet I suspect that's not going to be the moral of the story. As much as I am no fan of the Bishop's behavior or his leadership, I still believe he represents one of many Episcopal clergy.

This is a sordid trial, not solely for Bishop Bennison, but for men of a certain generation who blushed, who was disgusted, but who did little or nothing to help the church move ahead.