Photos of everyone clutching their phones now are going to look as cringe as those photos of people holding cigarettes in the 70s. “Why couldn’t grandma put it down for the picture?” Indeed.
I've intentionally never owned a smartphone myself. Our kids don't have it either. It is always fun to suddenly notice during train trips that we're more or less the only family here occupied with actual, real-life talking that also involves actual eye contact, lol.
That being said, maybe the communication pattern of two smartphone users sitting side by side is nonetheless still signaling the same humanly care, warmth, etc. Yes, there is a (IMO silly) technical device in between, but I'm not sure if all this would actually mean that it is "less humane" etc. It's just... different. Maybe.
There's nothing special about phones (in this sense). Most people just aren't interested in interacting with the other people around them. Or that might just be the famous British Reserve in action.
Very good point, thanks for this. Might indeed be first and foremost simply a personality trait (they would have been "introverts" and reluctant to conversation also in the pre-smartphones era, or even in the 19th century).
The book ends.
You may be engrossed for a while, or a long while, or even a very long while, but eventually you get bored. You have to close it for a while and look around, or talk to someone, or just sit there.
A phone with internet is infinite. You get bored of (a) and then you can go to (b) then (c) then back to (a) for hours and hours and hours and hours on end.
I think he GP was making the comparison based on both phones and cigarettes being addictive. What's the comparison with newspapers that makes one productive of the other?
Tell me which one already looks dumber.
I'm pretty sure the post was making a reference to the addictive properties of cigarettes and smartphones. Yet, either way, society's values change.