There’s lots of talk about how technology is forcing people into constant contact, but sometimes this can mean lack of contact with others in the physical world. You know, the place where there is stuff like water, beds, Cheerios, ferns, handicapped parking spaces…
In the Boston Globe, Charlotte Steinway, one of the authors of the excellent anthology RED, wrote this interesting (and kind of frightening) piece about how young people are using technology to shield themselves from social interaction.
I was getting the cold backpacked shoulder largely because everyone was on their iPod or cellphone, or at least pretending to be. The elderly use canes, the youth use phones. What horrified me the most was that by the end of September, I was right there with them, pretending I didn’t recognize the kid whose Facebook page told me he too likes TV on the Radio and Ratatat. And I was clutching my phone with a severity of object attachment I hadn’t felt since the days of the pacifier. In an age where hookups, breakups, and makeups are increasingly initiated via text or online, the social dynamic of face-to-face interactions has changed drastically and in some cases disappeared entirely.
Read the rest of the article here. But first, maybe take a minute to smile at someone near you. (NB: It’s the mouth expression that looks like a sideways parenthesis.)
Re: necessary compensation for my husband Jesus Diaz’s work writing about the iPad this weekend
anyone complain about how hard it is to push in a button? Ever? Nevertheless, there is an anti-button movement afoot. Elevators are starting to go un-buttoned. The Mac Tablet that everyone is speculating about has no buttons. And, of course, the iPhone has just one — cyclops-like. As I write this, I’m using a friend’s Apple mouse, which has no buttons; a massive, three-pane menu window keeps popping up whenever I tough the thing, which means that I’ve mostly been moving the cursor using sheer willpower (and the arrow buttons on the keyboard. It may be unfair of me, but I’m going to guess these two issues are related. Excuse me now while I go scream into a pillow.
