Mobile Computing's Marginalization of the Here and Now

I'm a fan of mobile computing generally. The convenience of SMS' unobtrusive pseudo-synchronousness is fantastic. Albeit slowly, I'm beginning to awaken to the potential of micro-blogging to connect and convey. Ambient findability is exciting. Our ability to connect and collaborate is undergoing incredible transformation right before us. All that, really.

And yet there is, of course, cause to be troubled. Cell phone fueled rudeness is only the most obvious (and least interesting) example. The notion that one's phone conversation is at least as pressing as the coffee purchasing transaction in which one is presently engaged is not just inconsiderate, it is incorrect in a profound but subtle way. Single-minded, willful awareness of and participation in one's present circumstances is central not only to civility, it just may be the secret to living well. Being glued to / distracted by one's computicator is a major impediment to such mindfulness, and that cost, no matter how easily ignored, is very real.

We might just as well be walking, shopping, and -- quelle horreur! -- drinking in our own little isolated virtual library carrels, walled off from one another, transparently isolated. Driving while on the phone is of course dangerous to the physical well being of those around you (and sorry but that's the case hands-free or not). Walking while texting/talking /browsing/blogging makes one not only annoyingly unaware of those with whom one shares the sidewalk, it frays, when done en masse, subtly but insidiously, civility's precondition: acknowledgment of one another's existence, to ourselves and to one another.

One often hears it said that many homeless, willfully ignored by most passersby as they are, want as much as anything to be acknowledged (I think I'd favor a warm safe place to sleep myself, but nevertheless). Just schlepping to work I sometime feel the same yearning. Casual, fleeting eye contact is some days impossible to come by. Sometimes I willfully fail to yield way to an oblivious text-er just so the collision will force our mutual acknowledgement, however surly, of one another's existence (does that make me weird?). I try to smile at any rare passerby who actually meets my gaze. It's a trifle by itself I guess but I do worry that civility is fragile and threatened. Online pseudo-anonymity gave us /b/ and its ilk (god help us); what harm will come of its real world analog (sic)?

When folks are immersed in their smartphone's 320x480 universe at the bar, computing truly has become horrifyingly ubiquitous. Here was a recent lineup: end of the bar; guy, head bent, texting obliviously; me; guy noodling his iPhone obliviously; woman talking loudly and angrily into cellphone re, from what I gather against my will, a recent breakup. Struck me as sad. Bowling Alone - the fact that in the US we're bowling in record numbers but that bowling together in organized leagues is all but a relic from a bygone era - troubled Robert Putnam, and it troubled me as well after I read that title in all its excruciatingly well researched glory, although I think Putnam underestimates technology's power to build social capital (after all, those folks sitting in the bar isolated by their iPhones are connecting all right, just not with those with whom they are colocated). Bowling alone (together) is small potatoes compared to drinking alone (together) for my money. "De-localization" is bad enough; de-localization at the watering hole seems a tragedy of sorts.

Awareness is what's at stake, and the well-being that comes with it. I am loathe to come across as all new age-y or anything like that (truly, a man less spiritual than I is tough to come by) but mindfulness in all its many layers and manefestations is vital. And it is especially fleeting in our heavily technology-mediated times.

Take a gander at Jon Kabat Zinn's talk at Google here if you don't already know what I'm driving at: