One wonders sometimes what kind of a world the internet has wrought, while one still can, that is, while there are still people who remember when it wasn't.
Interpersonally of course, in many respects it's been a total unmigitated disaster.
It figures, given that the medium was created for emergency military communication, then adopted by the WW1 world of academia. Look:
One 15-year-old I interviewed at a summer camp talked about her reaction when she went out to dinner with her father and he took out his phone to add “facts” to their conversation. “Daddy,” she said, “stop Googling. I want to talk to you.” A 15-year-old boy told me that someday he wanted to raise a family, not the way his parents are raising him (with phones out during meals and in the park and during his school sports events) but the way his parents think they are raising him — with no phones at meals and plentiful family conversation. One college junior tried to capture what is wrong about life in his generation. “Our texts are fine,” he said. “It’s what texting does to our conversations when we are together that’s the problem.” --Sherry Turkle
Wow. I'm glad to say that I haven't yet had a TV dinner or a phone-holding anything with my kids. Ever. That's after 11 years.
Sometimes when I Skype, and I hear the other person typing other Skype messages...
3 comments:
Things are not constantly present, why should people be?
Multi-tasking while we multi-task, we take a moment to ourselves, to multi-task. The span of attention stretched to the breaking point, every inscribable surface fed a multi-media feed. Sensation, brought to you by a custom selected sponsor, competes even with your own voice.
Answer to question 1 (please use your real name next time): There is a huge difference between being ontologically withdrawn and being ontically unavailable, ignorant and aggressive.
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