In a recent piece on the op-ed page of The New York Times, Thomas L. Friedman waxed rhapsodic on his newfound surprises and insights during a recent trip to the Peruvian Amazon rainforest. At the Tambopata Research Center Friedman said he found no Internet or cellphone service. "There was something cleansing about spending four days totally disconnected."
Buzz words are quickly developing on this subject, now called a disease. Linda Stone, a former Microsoft executive, refers to the phenomenon as "continuous partial attention." Other experts are developing studies on being "too connected."
Freidman writes, "It is the malady of modernity. We have gone from the Iron Age to the Industrial Age to the Information Age to the Age of Interruption."
We are all aware of the banalities of this always-being-connected trend. The worst is having to listen to the private life of a person on a crowded bus. I love the click-click-click of passengers on a plane, announcing to their loved (?) ones that the plane has just landed. Excuse me, could you just get the clobber you stored in the overhead bins down and be quiet until we disembark this flying cigar tube?
Or, at the supermarket, with their cart blocking the aisle, the "they don't have our kind of crackers/cookies/milk/storage bags" dialogue over the phone.
Those who have bought into this way of life will just see my remarks as being tiresome. Ho-hum, she doesn't get it. Being in the present and appearing to handle all the myriad details of one's daily life in an efficient manner is indeed noteworthy.
But it comes at a cost. For me a big cost is being unaware of your immediate surroundings-hard to hear the exotic shrill cry of a bird bringing its mate back to the nest.
A few days later, Friedman's column produced an interesting set of letters to the editor. All letter writers expressed some form of acknowledgment that the column had "struck a chord of guilt," "where I can completely unplug," "impersonal detachment created by cellphones and other such devices."
I particularly appreciated the remarks from Dr. Lonnie Hanauer: "The cellphone may be treated as an article of convenience rather than as a leash to constant availability... but their ability to annoy can be largely avoided without going to the Peruvian Amazon rainforest."
I see a trend. It will be so hip to be disconnected.[[In-content Ad]]
