In my opinion you miss a lot around you when you are constantly staring at the screen of your device.
Two days ago I was sitting at a birthday party. The guy next to me constantly took pictures sending them with Watsapp. I never spoke a word to him because he was busy with his phone all the time.
I'm still not sure what to think about that but I don't think I like the change.
Keep your phone off of your body more often.
Going to get a haircut, or go to the mall for an hour? Leave the phone in the car. It is really freeing; you do not realize the subtle impact of that phone/pager/digital watch constantly on the verge of maybe someone messaging you.
Try it out once or twice, especially if it sounds like it'd be tough.
I frequently continue programming/typing, slip in an audio note to self or search the web via Google Now, while holding a normal conversation. And people with whom I interact got used to this to the level of requiring me to have the data from Wikipedia ready for the continuation of the discourse. :)
This is not a comment on the externalisation, but on how gadgetry, used properly, can add to experience.
Also I suspect a lot of people, certainly myself, would find this behaviour quite unsociable, and hard to bear during every conversation. The reason I think, is because it is so easy for someone doing this to slip into focussing on social media, or some news article, privately. It's also hard to tell whether you were temporarily ignoring me or just refreshing your memory on something we are talking about.
Come to think of it, this kind of behaviour may even act as a solid social filter. After all, if you cannot comprehend that I'm actually being an active part of conversation, notwithstanding my relationship with gadgets around, I'm not sure I want to continue conversing with you in particular.
Someone might call me on basic etiquette, but those are rules that are to be redefined at some point.
All the normal methods of figuring out that someone is actively engaged are broken when you introduce devices. Eye contact, physical gestures, mini-facial expressions etc don't work anymore. How is one to tell that you're involved? Random interruptions?
It's perfectly ok for someone to 'drop out' of the flow momentarily to check their little screen but they shouldn't pretend that they're still involved in the actual conversation.
Why do you think Google likes meta content? Because that defines context. And content without context is often meaningless.
Edit: When you drop what you are doing to have a conversation with someone you make them feel important. Why not make people feel good?
If you ever do that while talking to me, I'm off. If you don't want to talk, don't, but if I'm genuinely less interesting than Google Now (of all things!) then why don't you just walk away?
1. It would be insulting to do that.
2. Most people understand that as long as the flow of conversation is maintained, it doesn't really matter what else you're doing. People have conversations while doing other things all the time.
3. Doing something else while conversing with someone doesn't actually mean you're less interesting than that something else. It means that temporarily, there exists reason to do that thing.
4. You have a real relationship with the person with whom you are conversing and both of you understand that taking 10 seconds to look something up on wikipedia will not damage that relationship.
Could you really think of none of those things? If not, why not just signal your luddism directly by saying "If you use google now in my presence, I will hellban you from my life?"
It's also insulting to not give a conversation your full attention, for some of us. If I'm trying to talk with you about something (as opposed to talking to you), I'm going to be insulted if you're checking your phone and otherwise broadcasting through body language and your inattention that "what you're saying to me right now is unimportant, and I would rather be doing other things."
Whether you are capable of paying full attention to our conversation while doing other things is immaterial; it's about perception. If I feel like you're not interested in the conversation, I'm just going to shut up and move on.
There are certain mental conditions (including variants of ADHD) wherein it's actually easier for someone to focus if they're doing two things than if they're doing one thing.
It's insulting to those of us with those conditions to be told to stop because you misunderstand us.
There are enough people with varying behavioral preferences or needs that people insulted by that behavior to a significant degree should simply not associate with those people. Opportunity lost? Maybe. Maybe not. They probably aren't going to be the best fit together for whatever they're doing if they clash with that type of amplitude though.
That said, there's a point here that I don't think is made quite often enough, or not explicitly enough:
People do not have the right to not be insulted. If you're insulted by something some people do, I'd guess your course of actions should be:
+ ask them about why they do it
+ express that you find it insulting and why
and then if the context of their actions doesn't remove the insult to you, stop associating with them.
People are sometimes purposefully insulting -- those people are dicks, and you'll accomplish nothing by engaging them.
Some people are accidentally insulting and will gladly try to be aware of your sensibilities while you're around. Some people will have behavior that is part of their identity that is insulting to you for reasons that are pretty alien to them.
Particularly in that last case, people on all sides need to grow the fuck up and realize that being insulted and/or being interpreted as insulting is not nearly as big of a deal as some people make it out to be. Be insulted, be offended, it's fine.
Stop being indignant about it.
Speaking for myself, I can't imagine being insulted by something that when clarified did not have insult as its intent without having some sort of skewed notion of my value as a living thing in relation to other living things.
3. If there is an actual, explainable reason, the person will understand. If the reason is "I felt like checking email/facebook," you are demonstrating that they are not capturing your attention at that time.
4. Sometimes people aim for a higher level of engagement than "not actively damaging our relationship."
All that said, I'm guilty just like anyone else. I fully agree that taking a few seconds to look up some information can enhance the conversation. Even that breaks the flow though, as the other person is left to stare around or start looking at their phone (assuming a two-person situation), but it's worth it. But, there's a fine line between that action and doing other things that have no relevance to the other person (which is what the GP was talking about - leaving voice memos to self, really?).
Honestly I hate when people end a conversation like this by just looking up the answer on wikipedia. The point of these conversations is quite often NOT actually about getting the right answer - the point is to enjoy the conversation - explore the 'space' around some topic, each participant in the conversation sharing their own perspective & knowledge. The cool thing about conversations like this is all the stuff that comes up which would otherwise be short-circuited by the closed door an "official" answer imposes.
Would you say the same about all the people at a Pop concert? People derive emotional value from their pictures and videos. Little computers-in-your-pocket just happen to make it easier.
Aside: We don't really know how many of those people in the pope-pic are sharing vs just recording for posterity -- the OP is primarily talking about the former
EDIT: Turns out the pics aren't really comparable. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5492146