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French philosopher and writer Albert Camus compared the human existence to the fate of Sisyphus. In Greek mythology Sisyphus had the thankless task of pushing a rock up a hill only to see it slip down again one he had pushed to rock to its apex. Sisyphus would then have to start again pushing the rock back up the hill.
The 40-hour work week might feel that way for many people as the rock are bills that always need to be paid but never seem to shrink. Complicating the problem and perhaps causing the sentence of modern day Sisyphus workers to become even more miserable has been the growing trend of being available at all hours via Blackberries.
Workers in modern economies do not just have to worry about their 8 to 5 shifts in the office but also the inevitable crashes of websites or other components of 24-hour a day commerce. While the prospect of working from home seems appealing in concept, the practice often requires that a person remained chained to their laptops and cell phones to respond to whatever perceived fire has to be put out.
Automation and electronics were created to improve make life easier for people. The telegraph allowed information that could take weeks or even months to travel across nations or oceans to arrive in minutes. Now people in industrialized nations have personal telegraph machines that can transmit messages in seconds. While the method of sending information has been simplified the unintended consequence is that people have been turned into slaves to their machines. Work used to end when the sun went down, but the sun never goes down on the global economy. When the American stock market is closed, markets in Europe or Asia are moving. Modern workers might not have to push boulders uphill, but sending off messages on Blackberries seems to be a different form of the same thankless fate.
