Modern Love

Two attractive young people, a couple, walking down the street side by side -- both on their cell phones.

Suddenly I wonder: is that the only way they can talk to each other?

- amba

Comments

[Marcus Cicero]

Technology encourages displacement of consciousness.

It's good because I can sit in my office at home, wearing my early morning attire, and place my mind far, far outside of this place. I can read your blog, for starters. Or the news, or whatever. Cell phones allow someone who might bide time actually talk to someone -- from a car, a plane, in line at a store. Arguably, one's consciousness can be extended by communication technology.

Consciousness displacement is bad because we're never home. We're never really anywhere, or with anyone. "Wherever you go, there you aren't." No one seems to pay attention anymore -- interpersonal relationships suffer. I was at a Dairy Queen to get milkshakes for the family the other day, and the woman there serving us was on her cell phone throughout the entire transaction. She talked, and talked, and talked. Something about her ex-boyfriend, I recall. Yes, I got my milkshakes. But she wasn't there. No eye contact, no acknowledgement -- as though I was no different than the buttons on her cash register.

My favorite quote of all time is by the art historian, Sister Wendy Beckett, of PBS fame. As I wallow in the complexity of advanced technology, and our very flighty culture, it sustains me:

"Life doesn't get better. It changes."

[amba]

Wonderful comment. In fact, the post merely serves as preface to the comment.

Here are two essays Andrew Sullivan has recently written on the same subject: "iPod World: The End of Society?" and, more tangentially, "Alone on a Stage", about the paradoxical total loss of privacy that comes with our snug new isolation.