Who controls who?

So a few years ago I began seeing these commercials advertising smartphone, blackberry's, etc. and their pitch was "now you can work from anywhere". I took that as "now you can work all the time". I know people love their "crackberry's" but it seems as all these devices do is make you work more. How many emails are sent from these phones at 10:00pm on a Saturday night or 2:00pm on a Sunday morning? What's worse is that we are only getting paid for 40 hours a week but  because of these things (and the instant gratification of sending a receiving messages wherever you are) we are probably working much more than that, but not getting paid for it. So in reality, the "work from anywhere" slogan should really be "work all the time for me and get paid less". How did this happen?

Long story short...I ended up getting one. I bought one mainly because of the calendar and contact feature as I frequently miss meeting (something I'm not too proud of) and I have  a ton of contacts. But I also get my Outlook emails on it. So now I'm constantly struggling to keep my work and private life separate. Sometimes an email will come in from a student on a weekend and I have to will myself not to act upon it because technically I'm not getting paid on weekends to do work. But then I have to ask why I have this urge to check it? I know it's work related and I know I'm not getting paid to respond to it...but why do I want to do it so bad? It's like crack. You know you shouldn't do it but you still do (by the way, I have not done crack. I'm just connecting it back to the crackberry euphemism). You have to admit, the Matrix movie is beginning to make more sense as we seem to become more and more intricately intertwined, dedicated, and almost a slave to our own electronic vices. 

So I will sit here at my computer (which I'm at for at least 6 hours a day) and try to find a way to make technology work for me, to bring me happiness and pleasure in leisure. And I'll try to keep from becoming too controlled by an electronic device that I spent $100 on.