My first observation comes from last Thursday morning, when I was walking from my office in the PPA Suite to the main departmental office. The purpose of my journey was to fill my coffee pot with water, which is the first step in being able to bypass the poison that is brewed in the mail room. When I rounded the corner I noticed a pile of students lounging outside the computer lab. There were 17 of them to be exact. I know this because their presence (and activities) inspired me to stop and take a headcount on my way back. Seventeen students ... all sitting outside the door, waiting for the current class to empty so that they could take their positions and do their time with Excel or SAP or whatever the topic might be. Seventeen people, aged 20-21 ... some guys, some girls ... enrolled in the same class ... common interests, common concerns ... yet the hallway was dead quiet. Seriously, NO ONE was talking. But 15 of the 17 were punching buttons or scrolling through screens on their cell phones. So I guess maybe I should qualify things. They weren’t PHYSICALLY talking. There is every likelihood that at least 12 or 13 of the 15 were announcing to the known universe that they were “waiting for class to start...uggghhhh!!!” or “OMG left my assignment at home!!!” or “I hate macros!!!” or “just had an amazing latte YUM!!!” or some other bit of equally indispensable information. But absolutely no one was actually speaking. I had a very strong urge to head down that hallway and bust off a dance move right in the middle of them, but since Hadley wasn’t with me (that is, there wasn’t anyone for me to embarrass) I decided it wouldn’t be worth it.
Observation #2 comes from this past weekend, when about 10 counselors from my Fish Camp group came over to have dinner and watch a movie. These kids are terrific and I really like them a lot and we have a very good time together. But I couldn’t help but notice (and be somewhat amused) that for a large chunk of the movie, half of them were jacking around on their phones. I don’t know if they were announcing that they were “watching a movie with Camp Wilkins!!!” or “Gumby’s pepperoni rolls = AMAZING!!!!” or if they were planning the remainder of the evening’s festivities or what. But have we really gotten to the point where we can’t just eat, hang out, and enjoy an 83-minute movie with actual living and breathing people? Go back and read that sentence again. The key word is “just”. Are our activities so important and/or our attention spans so short that we can’t put the phone away and see if we might be able to survive for a couple of hours without an update (either given or received)? And again, I’m not ragging on anybody in particular here. These kids are terrific and I’m not pointing any fingers specifically at them. I see this all the time, wherever I go. Classrooms, hallways, airports ... everywhere. It puzzles me.
Now ... before you start accusing me of being old and stodgy and completely out of touch with the times, let me note the following. First, yes I do want to be the old man with a threadbare, plain white t-shirt tucked into polyester pants pulled up to his chest who stands on his front porch, raising his fist and yelling (in a tired, shaky voice) at the young whippersnappers who just walked across the corner of his lawn. But that’s beside the point. I am many things -- some good, some bad -- but I most emphatically AM NOT a Luddite. My family lives via text message and Paige and I communicate via computer IM a lot of the time because our studies are on opposite ends of the house and typing is less obnoxious than yelling. Further, while a sizable part of me would rather listen to Ella Fitzgerald through an old gramophone, a sizably larger part prefers the convenience of digital media (despite the sonic warmth of vinyl that it can’t replicate). As a result, I have an Apple TV unit that is linked to the iTunes library on the Mac in my study, such that we can enjoy the entirety of my rather vast music library through our home theater sound system which is located in the living room ... all the while, pictures from selected albums in my iPhoto library on the same computer are being displayed on the television for the general enjoyment of all who might be interested. My house also features seven or eight iPods, three iPads, two XBOX 360 systems (one with Kinect), two Wii systems, and a complete, fully digital recording studio that doubles as our guest room.
Does this sound like the lair of someone who is anti-technology?
I didn’t think so.
So I do get the appeal of technology. And I do think it has its place. I just think we lose something as a society when we would rather pull out our cell phones and tell our 125,379 pretend-a-friends that we just checked in at Cinemark (like anyone cares ... seriously?) than have a conversation with the guy standing next to us.
What’s rather ironic about all of this, of course, is that if you know me at all, you realize that I am not exactly gregarious. I had a lot of friends when I was growing up, but if you get right down to it I only spent significant out-of-school time with one guy down the street and 4-5 people who were on the tennis team. In college, I spent virtually all of my time (aside from infrequent forays into Girlfriend-Land) with just three or four people. And while the PPA crowd probably will find this almost impossible to believe given how close-knit things tend to be at TAMU, there is absolutely no way that I could name more than five people who graduated from the Business School at UK at the same time that I did. Moving forward from there, we’ve worked at Texas A&M for 17 years and while I count some of my colleagues as “friends”, apart from two dinners that I remember in the mid-1990s, we’ve not done a single thing socially with any of them. Literally never. I’m not complaining about any of this. Not remotely. I had a blast in college and wouldn’t change a single thing about that experience. And where grown-up life is concerned, we have four kids and we’re very busy and happy with that model ... and I have neither the time nor the inclination to live my life any differently. I just find it beyond ironic that a guy who is as much of a total recluse as I am would be far more inclined to enjoy an actual conversation with a couple of locals in a backcountry English pub (as one example of which I have fond memories) than to crank out my cell phone and tell people that “I heart Keswick brew!!!”
All of this is doubly ironic when you realize that I will be posting a link to this entry on Twitter (Editor’s Note: if you want to be privy to my periodic bouts of non-blog cleverness you’ll have to follow me over there, as I deleted my FB account last week). Wanna try for triple irony? OK ... I am also well aware that numerous people will, in fact, read this post on their cell phones. I have no problem with that at all, nor do I have a problem with the fact that many of the same people also listen to my music and watch my videos on their phones. In fact, I even changed the layout of my Tunes site a few months ago such that visitors now have specific links to mp3 files rather than being forced to stream things through a Flash player. I made this adjustment to the site purely because Flash is not supported on some mobile devices. So while parts of me are being dragged -- kicking and screaming -- into the 21st century, at least they are still getting there.
In closing, I’ll point you to a wonderful (and very short, for those of you with pressing updates to attend to) piece by the editor of the New York Times. The article HERE is the very best I’ve seen on this topic to date. Do yourself (and your friends) a favor, and read it. While this guy uses social networking sites and appreciates their value, he also suggests that social networking “... is not just an ambient presence. It demands attention and response. It is the enemy of contemplation.”
The enemy of contemplation ... that is beautifully said.
Most of my post here was just a rant, obviously, and I realize that by and large you don’t particularly care what I think about cell phones and social networking. And ultimately, my point isn’t that any of these things are “bad” in and of themselves. I just find the sense of urgency that goes along with them to be completely bizarre. So if anything I’ve written or linked on this page causes you to at least think twice before you pull out your phone in a movie theater or while you’re having dinner with real-live friends, then at least some good (by my definition) will have come of it.
Peace,
Mike
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