Welcome to the first in this year’s series of Technology Enhanced Coaching columns. The emergence of another new year and all of the technological advances it is sure to bring provides us with a fresh opportunity to pause and reflect on where we’ve been and where we’re headed.
As we turn our attention to this year’s review of apps used to enhance coaching and wellness I’d like to take a moment in January’s column for broader reflection on our use of technology and its impact, for better and for worse, on and in the lives we live. While there are countless examples of how technology aids communication and enhances our ability to learn and interact with others, I think we can also appreciate the dizzying pace of technology and the implications it holds not only for the way we work, but its impact on our humanness, our being in relationship with others in general.
Consider for a moment how the advent of email and ubiquitous access to the internet via wireless laptops, smart pads, smart phones and apps for everything leaves us feeling constantly engaged in technology-aided information processing. Providers of technology hardware such as smart phones are so cognizant of the potentially negative impact on human interaction that they’re now even addressing it, in a humorous way, in advertising that depicts the relational price paid when a suitor “gets caught” watching the football game on the smart phone on his lap and out of the view of his date. While helpful in so many ways, technology also extracts a costly toll on our ability to participate in the naturally healing and restorative rhythms that occur in a state of separation from work (rest).
… read the complete story ~ http://issuu.com/onlinetherapyinstitute/docs/tiltiss9?mode=window&pageNumber=38
This article first appeared in the January 2012 issue of TILT Magazine ~ Therapeutic Innovations in Light of Technology.
Lyle Labardee, LPC, DCC, is a distance counseling credentialed, Licensed Professional Counselor specializing in web-enabled coaching. He is co-founder and CEO of LifeOptions Group, Inc., and is based in Michigan, USA.
