This week, I saw the future. And I want none of it.

Representatives with Microsoft's real-time collaboration business unit were in New York this week to attend a conference dedicated to real-time communications. While here, they demonstrated a product about which I had only written but not yet seen: Office Communicator 2005 (code-named "Istanbul").

Communicator is Microsoft's preferred instant-messaging (IM) client for business users. It comes with plenty of bells and whistles, the most obvious of which is the ability to track your colleagues' availability in real time.

Sure, you can do this already to some extent with existing consumer and business IM clients. But Microsoft has a bigger vision in mind: It wants to add presence to lots and lots of applications, not just IM. Microsoft has begun deploying presence in Microsoft Outlook. Redmond's ultimate goal: To add it to as many Microsoft and third-party applications as possible.

With presence, users can share particulars about their availability in far more detail beyond a simple "I am away from my computer right now" message. Depending on how policies and parameters are set, users can get quite granular, down to the most minute details of how they are spending their hours and minutes.

You can bet this idea appeals to bosses everywhere, especially those overseeing individuals located in remote locations.

When the Softies showed me Communicator, reveling in the promised glories of increased worker productivity, streamlined connectivity and always-on availability, all I could think was: "Let me off this train!" The fact that 49,000 of Microsoft's 57,000 employees can now check the availability of everyone at the company (other than Chairman Bill Gates and CEO Steve Ballmer) doesn't impress me. It scares me.

I grant you, I am a Luddite. A card-carrying one who just happens to write about technology, but a Luddite nonetheless. I was reticent to get a cell phone (and still don't use it a lot). I refused a Blackberry.

I do not want to become a member of the always-reachable society. I am dead-set against the idea of wiring subways for cell connectivity and making e-mail and IM ubiquitously available on airlines. I am a fan of answering machines; Tivos (even though I'm not much of a TV watcher); and OOFs (out of the office messages) that relay little more information other than I am not available.

We do not need to be always connected. It's bad for our psyches and our nervous systems. We humans need down time. Presence isn't going to make us more productive. It's going to make us even more distracted and resentful of how our precious personal time is increasingly being devoured by our work day.

For my part, I don't need to know when my colleagues are at lunch, at their daughter's middle-school graduation ceremony, or on vacation. I don't want to be able to participate in more meetings and Web conference sessions. At the risk of sounding like the minimalist "Who da'Punk" over at Mini-Microsoft, I think fewer meetings and smaller teams equal more productivity.

The old-fashioned definition of "presence" refers to being present. As in the here and now. Let's keep it that way.

What's your take? Do you see a silver lining to what I perceive as a presence cloud? Or do you agree that presence is just going to make our already cluttered desktops and minds even more cluttered?

Talk back below or write me at mswatch@ziffdavis.com and
let me know what you think.