posted on Jun, 6 2014 @ 05:55 AM
a reply to:
toidiem
The thing that makes me angry about the rise of portable data and communication systems like smartphones and tablets, is that they ruin the quality of
discourse in this modern society. I am not referring to the habit of twitter users, to use less characters than a word would ordinarily contain, just
so they can extend the communication potential of the character limit.
I am also talking about face to face communication. I have a friend who has a smartphone, and lives about four and a half miles from me. I will visit
with her periodically, share a cup of tea, maybe play a retro computer game, or listen to a metal album of some sort. However, since she got this
device, she can barely pull her nose out of it for long enough to complete a sentence. This means, that I will travel the lions share of five miles,
so that someone with whom I am conversing, can trail off mid sentence to devote more of her processing time to commenting on someones facebook status,
retweeting things, and monitoring the order in which her Spotify or LastFM song lists actually play.
So despite the fact that I myself, eschew the smartphone for a variety of reasons, I am denied good conversation as a result of the decision my
friends and some members of my family have made, to own one.
I do not own a smartphone, but I am none the less effected by their ascendency to the level of importance people now place in the gadgets.