How not to be alone

As somebody who seldom carries a mobile phone, figures out local directions with an address and paper map, etc., this editorial resonates strongly with me, and the author illustrates his point beautifully. His expression, &quot;diminished substitutes,&quot; captures a feeling I&#x27;ve had for a while about the 4G lifestyle, or even one that just takes place too much on the internet.<p>In the past 3-4 years, when smartphones completely hit the mainstream, I have noticed a very significant change in those around me, even in some people I am close with. They seem more ... robotic! I am certain if I moved in different circles, I would&#x27;ve noticed a similar pattern years before among BlackBerry users, who were the butt of the &quot;CrackBerry&quot; joke ca. 2004.<p>I&#x27;m not sure how else to describe somebody completely fixated on a small device, resorting to it almost like some security blanket when an everyday problem needs solving. Portable video games like Game Boy, and traditional mobile phones, which no doubt have been similarly derided in the past, offer a poor comparison for their limited scope. The small screen provides some strange tunnel vision I don&#x27;t care to encounter.

I think this is fairly complex rather than a simple uniform transition, and interacts with culture in a way that varies a lot by region.<p>What the author seems to describe with dismay as being caused by smartphones has been pretty much normal in Scandinavia since long before smartphones. It&#x27;s considered polite to pretend not to notice things like someone crying on a park bench, if they aren&#x27;t someone you know. It&#x27;s also (with some exceptions) considered weird and intrusive to strike up conversations with strangers, and instead you&#x27;re supposed to be absorbed in your own thoughts, or book, or newspaper—or yes, nowadays, smartphone—unless you&#x27;re out with friends or family you already know [1]. An exception is if you are at a bar and drunk. Of course, the norms are different in, say, Greece, and different again in Japan.<p>[1] One blogger refers to this as the Privacy In Public Act <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;matadornetwork.com&#x2F;abroad&#x2F;how-to-piss-off-a-dane" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;matadornetwork.com&#x2F;abroad&#x2F;how-to-piss-off-a-dane</a>

<i>I was faced with a choice: I could interject myself into her life, or I could respect the boundaries between us. Intervening might make her feel worse, or be inappropriate. But then, it might ease her pain, or be helpful in some straightforward logistical way.</i><p>Ease the author&#x27;s discomfort, more like. If you need to think about whether to approach a distressed person, chances are that your subconscious is telling you to leave them the hell alone.

Maybe the OP is right and today&#x27;s smartphones make it vastly harder to choose to approach nearby people than to retreat into the scrolling names of one’s contact list. But how was it five or ten years ago? There was always something which made it harder to choose to approach nearby people: dumbphones, MP3 players, newspapers, etc.<p>Maybe the OP just uses his smartphone and today&#x27;s tech as an excuse for his timidity to approach people.

Completely unrelated to the message of the story but: Did he end up talking to the girl after all or not?

More generally speaking, I think the problem has to do with how we tend to view &quot;things&quot;, how we get attached to them and how we forget why we have those things in the first place. Assuming that nearly everything man-made is a tool (be it a hammer, religion, politics, the economy or even art), most of the things we make have a purpose. I think the problem is that not everybody gets the purpose of those tools as clearly as others, sometimes to the point where the purpose no longer matters and the tool becomes an end in itself.<p>What I&#x27;m trying to say is that we tend to glorify the tools themselves, despite their potential flaws or inadequacies. We forget that we made those tools to make certain tasks simpler, or more enjoyable, with (hopefully) the ultimate goal of being generally happier. In my opinion, a good example of this is the monetary system, where some people hellbent on making as much money as possible end up living miserable lives.<p>By shifting the emotional attachment from being happy (by yourself and socially) to the thing that helps bring happiness (&quot;diminished substitutes&quot;), we start valuing the tool for its apparent value rather than its intrinsic one. It becomes the &quot;chasing the dragon&quot; philosophy of life ; we create a dependency, or even an addiction, where there doesn&#x27;t need to be one in the first place. We focus so narrowly on the means that we forget the end.

&quot;Most of the time, most people are not crying in public, but everyone is always in need of something that another person can give, be it undivided attention, a kind word or deep empathy. There is no better use of a life than to be attentive to such needs.&quot;<p>I must be a misanthrope, but I disagree wholeheartedly with the latter. Limiting the annoying exposure to other people&#x27;s problems is a feature, not a bug. People cry every day over ridiculous small-minded problems.

Technology neither brings us together nor drives us apart. It rather gives us tools for specifying social activity in greater detail. It used to be that I had to wait until I saw one of my friends at the coffee shop in order to share something with her, now I can just do so via Facebook.<p>We tend to think of &quot;before Facebook&quot; as some pre-2000 state that&#x27;s never returning, but that&#x27;s not really the case. I have friends where we might know each other for a month before we take the step to friend each other on Facebook. Some people I won&#x27;t interact with on Facebook. Lots of my relatives I block. If they want to talk to me, I&#x27;m readily available via chat or message on FB, it&#x27;s just the daily flow of stuff they&#x27;re publically sharing I&#x27;m opting out of.<p>I think a lot of older people who lived significant parts of their lives without social tools tend to make the effects of having them out to be more than what they are to those of us who grew up with them. Most people I know use them perfectly naturally, they don&#x27;t waste hours and hours on Facebook or bury themselves in their phones to escape social interaction.<p>They just move flexibly from social arena to social arena. When I&#x27;m at the bar, I&#x27;ll pick up my phone if there&#x27;s nothing interesting going on and play a game or text or whatever, then just put it down when I get bored of it or someone interesting comes around. We use technology as a way of filling in parts of your life that would otherwise go wasted with something that could be more meaningful.<p>To worry about software replacing the real is just missing the point.

I found this article angsty, obnoxious and full of belabored, melodramatic prose, just like the rest of Foer&#x27;s writing.<p>The instinct not to interfere in complete stranger&#x27;s emotional turmoil -- especially when she is a 15 year old girl and you are a man in his 30s -- has little to do with technology. There are other ways to distract oneself in uncomfortable situations.<p>I also can&#x27;t relate to his &quot;diminished subsitute&quot; hypothesis. When I look at my text&#x2F;call&#x2F;email&#x2F;skype logs I&#x27;m hard pressed to find any instances where I used a &quot;diminished&quot; medium -- sending a text when I should have called, calling when I should have visited, etc... Some people may do that, but that&#x27;s not a symptom of technology, that&#x27;s just a way of being rude that technology has enabled.<p>That&#x27;s really the crux of the problem with modern communication technology. It gives people more outlets to be impolite by using it an innapropriate times or innapropriately. But in many ways, it allows us to connect and stay in touch with people that were never possible before.

Sometimes I wonder if we&#x27;re in a transitionary phase of mobile technology where we are still at the point of directing our attention at the actual technology rather than using it as a compliment to our &quot;real-world&quot; experience. Glass seems like a step forward in theory, but in practicality I believe it&#x27;s just moving the screen from your pocket to the side of your head.

If you have 25mins to spare I would suggest watching the whole Middlebury Commencement speech from which this was adapted.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=RgGzz3fKINA&amp;feature=share" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=RgGzz3fKINA&amp;feature=share</a>

I am not disagreeing with the author of the article, but I will say something positive about the &quot;smartphone life style&quot;: my wife and I live in a small town in the mountains. Although we have a lot of local friends, our family is distributed in San Diego, San Francisco, and Rhode Island. I really enjoy keeping in touch with my family by emailing pictures while I am hiking, etc. in real time as I am experiencing life. I probably send at least two pictures a day. Later, on the phone, the previously sent pictures are something to talk about. Using video Skype or iChat video also helps keep in touch.<p>If I lived in a small town with almost all of my family and friends nearby, then I might agree more with a limited technology lifestyle, but that is not the way it is.

On the topic of technology ruining human interaction: I recently read an idea worth trying. When you go out with friends for drinks, take everyones phone and stack them face down with yours on top. The rule is the first person to grab their phone pays the tab. I used to make fun of friends that were engrossed with their phones by acting like I was texting on an invisible phone. But, this works much better.