iPods, Cell Phones, Fragmentation
So, I’m walking around campus, as usual. And I’ve noticed, lately it seems like nearly everyone is either talking on a cell phone or buried in pair of headphones (usually white earbuds). This observation led me to think about it, it’s a pretty interesting phenomenon.
So what are the tradeoffs that people are unconsciously making here?
In the case of the iPod (or other music player of choice), it’s obvious: they’re trading entertainment for interaction with their environments. Basically relegating themselves to obliviousness to the sounds and sights of the places they’re going. They’re also choosing not to interact with the people that they pass along the way, or at least to put up a barrier repelling all but the most tenacious passers-by (ie: friends who happen to have caught up with them). In other words, momentary sensory and social oblivion in exchange for a few minutes of tunes.
How about the cellphoners? Well, it seems to me like they’re trading one type of social tie for another. By making it pretty much impossible to interact with them for people in their presence, they’re strengthening ties to remote people — the friends back at home, the family, the significant others. Trading loose proximity-based acquaintance for ostensibly stronger friendships.
Both of them lead to the same end: devaluing the people who are in close proximity to you. Basically shutting out the world around you. And while on the surface the two are different (in that one involves tradeoffs of one social interaction for another, while the other trades entertainment for social interaction), I think they’re both fundamentally antisocial, in that they both devalue out-of-group interaction. And both marginalize the moment in favor of things that aren’t happening here and now.
I’m not a big fan of that. The here-and-now is awesome.