A few weeks ago, walking through the crowded streets of New York City, I passed hundreds of people—without making eye contact with more than two or three of them. They screamed into tiny, hidden speakers, wirelessly connected to their phones—“Can you hear me?” They were plugged into a world apart, separated by time and space from the ground on which their feet were planted. They stared at Blackberry screens, scrolled through e-mails—all the while, bumping into trees, parked cars, and fellow zombies.
Perhaps this is why we humans call ourselves social beings—we are so afraid of being alone that we are always connected, always checking for new messages, always making calls, and in the meantime, we’re always forgetting where we are and who we are with. We self-isolate without ever meaning to. We have become, at once, the least and most social generation of humans ever to inhabit the earth.
I am no different. I text twice as much as I call. I think e-mail is exceptional. I will avoid eye contact with everyone I pass on the street, almost automatically. I refuse to get a landline—it’s simply unnecessary.
The change seen in the last 50 years—a communication revolution—has put so many things to death against their will, and by no fault of their own—they are inanimate objects, after all. They get outdated, updated, and phased out. Consider the stereo, a bulky box ingesting spinning, metallic-rainbow reflecting disks, whose shallow landfill graves are quickly being filled, courtesy of the ubiquitous and more convenient iPod. Consider also the hungry, coin-eating phone booth, helical telephone cords you used to wrap around your fingers. Consider, even, the standard car key—here today, gone tomorrow.
My father now owns a car whose key never touches the ignition. The ignition and the key are not perfectly shaped complements of one another—they don’t have to be anymore. Thoroughly detached and physically divorced, they communicate from a distance, a great distance, in fact—a full twenty meters if the interlocutors so wish.
Communication is more efficient, more convenient—the key and the car gain mobility and independence. But is it better? I don’t think so.
It is not terribly surprising that our devices have turned in this direction—the direction of the remote and the wireless, which are really just synonyms for detached. It is how most of us communicate (or don’t communicate) with one another these days. I can go to a grocery store, and check myself out with the assistance of a computer. I can pump my own gas in every state but New Jersey. I can refill a prescription without ever speaking to another human being. I can withdraw and deposit money into my bank account without ever interacting with a teller. I just stop by and visit the ATM—it sucks in dollar bills or spits them out at me.
This is how we exist today—as autonomous, for the most part self-dependent, individuals—and we seem to like it. We feel disencumbered. It’s fast, convenient, and helps us evade small talk. And yet we call ourselves social beings.
I ask you to consider whether something should lose its value simply because it is unnecessary, whether it should be kicked out of existence simply because we can live without it. Most of the good things in life are not necessary. Many of the good things in life are slow and out of our way. I ask you to consider whether you truly do not miss the phone booth, or the telephone wire, or the massive stereo player, or the random small talk. Sometimes, I do.
