The night before I spent two hours trying to pay $15.99 for 24 hours of broadband connection only to have to debug their system myself (IP address assignment problem). There were a couple of weak WiFi signals available out the window, but most were WEP protected and breaking out AirSnort just to check mail seemed like overkill. Although Any@Web caught a couple of wardrivers trying to hack the WiFi connection! In the morning, the surf reports for Ocean Beach said it was small, blown out bad surf. We went anyway and had a great time in medium, decent shape, no wind waves. On the way to the conference the MapQuest directions were wrong. There was voice cell phone but not data coverage. My Jabra 250 Bluetooth headset randomly paired with another device and forgot all about the new Nokia 6230 it was recently in love with (bought from Taiwan—not available in the U.S.—and hacked onto ATTWS). Lots of people on the WiFi connection made it frustratingly slow. Ouch! Where did that surly rant come from and where is it going?

Well, these things and more were on my mind as I sat down at the panel on “Who is investing in Social Software” and Chris asked me “What do you want to invest in these days?” Some inventions that actually make my life better and easier of course! While a self-confessed gadget geek and early adopter of everything, I am also a quick quitter of the new stuff which doesn't actually improve my life. Quick pop quiz:
1. Over the last five to seven years has technology increased or decreased your personal productivity?

2. Increased or decreased your overall quality of life?

3. Strengthened or weakened your interpersonal and family relationships?

My answers are 1. decreased, 2. increased, 3. weakened. In terms of time, technology has been a net negative on my life for quite awhile. Ten years ago, I spent zero time dealing with CC email, SPAM, viruses, blue screens, IP address configurations, cell phone coverage areas, WiFi, Bluetooth compatability, digital media player/media compatibility, DRM restrictions, style sheets, HTML tags, digital photos, hardware compatibility and installation, and a host of other now daily issues. Before email and IM, my messaging cue was manageable. Now there is special software to manage it. 99% of my daily email messages (80% of it spam, the remaining 18% valid mails) don’t actually need immediate attention. Email has added in increased sense of urgency to all messages. I remember when my mother went from writing snail mail and being happy with a two week turn-around to email. She called the day after she sent her first one asking why I hadn’t replied and was I alright? The capacity for immediate response has raised the expectations. I could click through very interesting and engaging web sites 24 hours a day and never get anything else done! With three different IM clients running it is easy to get pulled into multiple impromptu chats that while engaging, may not necessarily be productive in the grand scheme of things. So productivity, overall, a decrease due to the increased ability to message (and randomize) and the increased level expectations on response.

As a geek, I actually don’t mind the overhead technology has added to my life (it adds to the challenge), which, in part, leads to the conclusion that overall quality of life has increased despite the overhead. I like to solve problems and there are lots of problems to solve. Most of you probably reach the opposite conclusion. The other aspect of technology that has added significantly to quality of life is mobility. My favorite inventions of the last 10 years have been the laptop, cell phone (with OneRate nationwide), the Blackberry, and the (pocket sized) digital camera. These devices have allowed me to be connected to whatever and whomever I want wherever I want. They have enabled integration of personal and professional responsibilities very closely in a way that improves balance in life. The fact that I can have access anywhere doesn’t mean I HAVE to be accessible everywhere, which is the beauty of it all.

In my experience, new technologies have (to date) served to weaken interpersonal and family relationships. What used to be phone calls are now emails. What used to be personal hand written letters with lots of doodles is now plain text. Many occasions for interpersonal communication (going to the bank, filling up the car with gas, buying groceries, and many forms of shopping) are now being intermediated by technology instead of interpersonal connections. I met a Stanford researcher a couple of years ago who was studying the effect of technology on child shyness and socialization. Her thesis that technology use is materially different between shy and non-shy people is supported by initial research. The rise of shyness and introverted behavior has tracked surprisingly well with the rise of the PC, bank tellers, automatic gas pump payments, video game consoles and the other human disintermediation technologies. Remember when kids used to go outside and play with their friends? Technology is not very well suited to serving the higher order emotional needs of humans. Wait a minute, wasn’t one of the promises of technology to free us from drudgery so that we had more time for the “important things in life” like family, relationships, art, music, etc.?

So when are we going to get the social benefits of technology outweighing the overhead? Soon I hope. We see the initial twinklings of this idea with some of the social networking sites. Version 1.0 of the web was all about giving worldwide access to huge stores of information and resources from around the world. It was about expanding our horizons. Now my horizons are so broad and wide that the signal-to-noise ratio is totally out of whack. But the infrastructure put in place supports the next generation which will be about narrowing the horizons.

So what do I hope for from Web 2.0? What do I want to invest in? Technology that actually reduces the technology footprint in my life. Applications that result in a net increase in productivity. And most importantly, technology that enables me to strengthen interpersonal and family relationships. That technology needs to be very easy to use and easy to integrate into my life. One leading candidate, my Nokia 6230 cell phone (even though I had to hack it. Makes me almost want to be a hardware investor :).

Martin Tobias is a venture partner at Ignition Partners, private investor and consultant who works with early stage software start-ups. He was the founder, CEO, and Chairman of Loudeye [NASDQ: LOUD]. Prior to Loudeye, Tobias spent six years with the dark forces of Microsoft and four with blue suits and white shirts of Andersen Consulting (Accenture). He was one of the first Accenture consultants to break the strict formal dress code and wear jeans, a tee-shirt and flip-flops to work, one of the earliest in a string of broken rules which litter and distinguish his career.