Cyber multi tasking
Waiting to fly, all those round me at the airport were connected. Smartphone, not so smart phones, really, really dumb phones (only used for talking and texting), laptops, iPads, kindles.
Onboard passengers whip out hand held games, iPads, kindles, and any other PED allowed. They talk, type, read and play.
Waiting for the Bainbridge Island ferry to leave from Seattle is a line of cars. As I walk by I see the young and the elderly, everyone is using some kind of electronic device. One couple, at least 60 years of age, were chatting but not to each other. She was actually talking on her cell phone, he was texting on his. Young fellow has his laptop on the arm of his car, as he works on some kind of “I have to do this now” thing. Countless smart phones, drivers checking email, twitter accounts, googling as they fish for information. The nearby McDonalds provides the wifi, onboard the ferry will.
Every driver and passenger was connected to a world separate from the ferry line. On board at every table there were lap tops and handhelds, the typing, the talking the reading begins again. One woman uses her lap top and her smart phone in concert.
Later in a restaurant there are smart phones and iPads on tables by each diner. We are surrounded by some of the most amazing scenery, marinas, flowers, bays, no one is looking. Some diners are texting and talking to someone who is not in the room. Lone diners provide a strange cadence. Instead of the reciprocal murmuring usually heard in restaurants, there is now murmur, silence, murmur, silence. It sounds like the orchestra is playing only half of the score.
What happened to reflection time, to dreaming the dream time, to hatching the next best seller movie or novel time?
Is one of the unintended consequences of the cyber age the fact that now not only do we multi task we do it in multi dimensions? Are we driven to tweet, post and pin for fun, profit and pleasure 24x7? Has “let your fingers do the walking” taken on a whole new meaning?
Wait, wait, I can’t answer that now, I am writing this on my smart phone.