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Time to stop being a slave to technology!

Who isn't feeling a degree of disquiet about being so much harnessed to technology?  Computers, tablets and smartphones to name a few examples.    And then there are all the seemingly all-pervading social networks a la Facebook, Twitter, etc. etc.

"Every morning Mark Pesce resists the urge to dive into the digital world without turning his mind to meditation.

As a technology futurist and author, he has every reason to do otherwise. Yet he admits you can't expect to survive without regular time out in a world where the pace of innovation keeps increasing.


This week two names that have come to dominate people's lives rolled out new products - Apple launched the iPad mini, only six weeks after it released the latest iPad and iPhone, and Microsoft launched its latest, and possibly last, operating system, Windows 8.
It seems gadget-obsessed consumers just can't get enough.


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Australia ranks fourth in the world behind South Korea, Japan and Sweden for active mobile broadband subscriptions per 100 inhabitants with a score of 82.7 per cent, the International Telecommunications Union reports.


Globally, consumers are also wrapped up in pursuit of the latest: it took Apple four years to sell 100 million iPhones, then just 2.5 years to sell 100 million iPads. Apple analyst Horace Dediu predicts the gap will close again with 100 million iPad minis sold by the end of 2013 - a little more than 12 months.


However, people are starting to ask what impact this rapid pace of technology adoption and innovation is having on Australian society, families, education and workplace productivity. Are we technology's masters or its servants?


"The whole culture is like a giant two-year-old. We're over-excited and we're going to need some nap time," Pesce says. "We're starting to get this sense that we have to find balance again."


If we have swung too far into the digital world, it's because we've been seduced by what Pesce describes as the joy of connecting to anyone, anywhere using social media and mobile devices."


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