The sad reality of why we are not living in the moment | Hacker News Reader

The sad reality of why we are not living in the moment

myscienceacademy.org

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This is a pretty accurate depiction of my everyday life.

It wasn't until a few years ago that I suddenly noticed everyone was always on their phone -- all the time -- myself included.

Since then, I've been trying to be consciously aware of my own phone-checking habits while I'm around other people.

Unfortunately, it's incredibly hard for me to not check my phone every other minute. A lot of the times when I'm with my wife, she'll remind me that I'm scrolling through the latest Hacker News posts without even thinking about it -- and I feel awful.

Technology is a really great force in the world. It allows all of us to be closer together -- communicate better, share ourselves, and express our feelings to a wider audience. But at the same time, it's also an incredibly isolating force -- it ensnares our focus and passions, and often times leads us to disconnect with the reality around us.

I'm not really sure what the solution here is (or if one is even needed -- maybe this is the future?) -- but for me, I find the idea of not letting my technology rule my life -- romantic.

I wonder if people will look back at this period and shake their heads or if things are only going to get worse from here on out? Is our obsession with these gizmos a temporary aberration caused by their newness and the fact that we haven't yet adapted to having them in our lives?

This video sure does hit home, if only because I see a little of myself in there.

I think there is nothing special about this period - the problem of being present is not new and I think it might be useful to remind us of 'greatest hits' on this topic. My personal favourite is "To Have or to Be?" by Erich Fromm.

> Is our obsession with these gizmos a temporary aberration caused by their newness and the fact that we haven't yet adapted to having them in our lives?

(emphasis mine)

Newness is certainly part of it, but not in the way I think you meant. It's not that the devices are new, but that the devices promise to deliver a never-ending stream of newness. There was a study done on the effects of always-available, always-fresh material right at our fingertips; newness as a drug. I don't have the citation for that off-hand, but maybe someone else will chime in with it.

The consequence of this is that I don't think it's temporary. Even as the devices become old hat, the content will keep coming. The rate at which new, hot memes appear is startling.

If the conclusion reached by the aforementioned study is true, our addiction to these devices will not wane as we acclimate to them. We will need to accept that overuse is a problem. Some people will struggle with it, just like some people struggle with other addictions.

I'd like to think so. I go through phases, where NOT having my face in electronics feels new (and good) - doing things with my hands, like painting a room or putting in a sink faucet. (And I used to have extreme aversions to handy-man type work.)

Single embedded video spam. Here is a direct link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OINa46HeWg8

In a number of scenes, people are recording the moment (birthday cake, proposal, rock concert).

Ted Chiang's latest short story explores the potential pitfalls of logging life's each and every moment:

http://subterraneanpress.com/magazine/fall_2013/the_truth_of...

Edit: clarity

At a recent family wedding the registrar-lady told everyone to put their phones away, to enjoy the ceremony and to live for the moment. I was most pleased with this as I am a firm believer in there being more to life than it being a 'spectacle mediated by images'. However, it is very hard for some people, to them things don't actually happen unless photographed, instagram-filtered and blogged to Facebook. To live life without doing all that is some kind of 'separation anxiety' where participation is needed - tough.

I don't think it's sad. I think it's exciting. For introverts the world is ten times better nowadays when you can always fall back to your phone.

Agreed. I used to read a book everywhere, now I can keep in touch and play games as well. I love it.

As an introvert myself, I strongly disagree. Just because we can zone out, it doesn't mean we should. I find it extremely rude when someone pulls out their phone in the middle of a conversation (even in groups) for no good reason.

Frankly it made me appreciate more the friends I know from the cultural and social areas, as opposed to tech; they're less likely to have smartphones with Internet access.

With Google Glass coming I can only imagine this getting worse. People that look like they're paying attention to you will be checking their stream. You will no longer even having the privilege of knowing you are being ignored.

This reminds me of a scene from Mad Men, where Roger Sterling shares his new found wisdom with Don Draper:

Roger: You know, it's very interesting, but a lot of times you think people are looking at you, but they're not. Their mind's elsewhere. Don: Lots of people that haven't taken LSD already know that, Roger.

If you're talking with someone, rather than at them, I think it would become apparent fairly quickly that they weren't really involved in the conversation.

I don't own or use a mobile phone and I can see all the behaviours of the people in the video in family and friends.

Without a mobile or any other source of external interruption, i enjoy every moment i have the chance to share with a friend (not that many, i'm afraid).

But i have to say, this life is not for everyone. Without a mobile, i'm outcasted of some kinds of interaction with society:

* Any social interaction made on the fly. For me, it's necessary to warn other people that they can't always change plans because they can't get in touch with me in certain moments.

* Any interaction with certain groups of people ("friends") that are using closed communication like Facebook or Whatsapp. (Whatsapp is probably the worst, since you can't have a account without a mobile, at all)

* Most of the interactions with potential sexual partners. No SMS or FB stalking, no attention. :P

* In some countries, a mobile (or a landline) is required to have a bank account (e.g. U.S.)

Though this video is very well produced and gets its point across in a sensible way the problem call for a deeper analysis. This talk [1] by Joe Kraus is just that.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6449816

Woaw, fantastic talk. Thanks for sharing.

While this is a well made video that really forces us to question what we are doing with our lives, I believe David Mitchell has better theories on living in the moment.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6HTt6QJqzxk

David Mitchell's point is different with respect to this one. Although both valid, he argues that living in the moment is not possible whereas the video is saying that we're kind of not living in the 'here' but somewhere else.

On the topic of the video it's suggesting that we all spend far too much time on our phones. This is probably true but the time that I see people doing this is when there's nothing better to do, like on mass transit or waiting in line. Which seems fair enough to me.

Agreed, on both points. I suppose I was just looking for an excuse to post a David Mitchell video somewhere. The guy cracks me up.

I think this video is seriously exaggerating the problem. Probably it's to get the point across, but still, I see lot of people commenting (e.g. on my Facebook wall) that "it's an accurate description of what's happening". It's not.

Also, I'm not really worried. I see connected computers and smartphones as extensions of my mind, an exocortex if you like. I welcome them taking bigger part in my life. There's a risk of people getting too obsessive with their use of technology, but I really think this will level out with time. Right now it's novelty effect.

But I might be biased. I'm addicted to computers since being 9. ;).

Well, I'd argue that if people recognize it as something that is happening, you need to provide some evidence that they are wrong. Why would they 'lie' about this?

My personal experience is that this video is quite accurate. I'm both fascinated and annoyed to an increasing degree to constantly see everyone around me either 'not present' because they're busy with their phone, or 'half-present' because they're putting the phone between them and their experience (taking photos, recording video, etc.).

I'm relatively lucky that I'm in the age bracket that is sort of between these things, where many of my close friends have 'dumb' phones and less of the incessant need to record everything for posterity.

But it still bothers me when, at least four times in a two-hour span, one particular friend of mine checks his phone and interrupts a conversation to answer a text message that is not time-sensitive. I don't really see the point, and it breaks up something nice.

It's even worse when I observe my sixteen year-old sister. She's constantly 'whatsapping' with friends, chatting on facebook, playing games on her iphone. My mother worries because she spends so much time doing homework, and she gets stressed out as well, but somehow nobody realizes that it's the constant interruption of meaningless chatter that probably slows her down significantly. I can only imagine what the situation is like for her at school.

This is a real problem. I was traveling last year in South America and suddenly found that I was looking at my phone while on a wonderful trek or while climbing a pretty amazing mountain. I started doing 'no phone days' or 'no phone outings'.

I still do them because when I have my phone, I feel the need to check my email or reddit or hackernews. Logically, there's no reason to do it while I'm out - it feels almost like a disorder! I do regret no phone days sometimes because I don't end up having a camera on me.

After doing no phone days for a while I managed to get better at not looking at my phone when out. Nowadays I manage to not look at it while out for dinner with friends and stuff like that. But I certainly wish my friends wouldn't look at their phones either.

Unfortunately, not everyone realizes what this habit is doing to us. Certainly not the programmer nerds I usually work with, or the business types who are always looking at their blackberries. I also took down a lot of notification services on my phone (twitter, facebook, etc.) because I DO NOT NEED TO KNOW ABOUT THIS STUFF ALL THE TIME. I need notifications for the really important stuff (someone died, server went down, my best friend got engaged etc.), when did a picture of a cat on facebook become that ?

As someone who uses technology a lot I think I'm getting better and better at filtering this stuff out and focusing on stuff that matters. I feel like most people aren't even aware though of how distracted they've truly become.

I'm happy there's a video about it. This one's pretty good.

I'm doing an information technology degree needless to say the majority of my interactions are with fellow info tech students and despite the fact that everyone carries a phone, laptop and/or a tablet this sort of social dysfunction never happens.

I've never really understood this. I sit in front of the internet 10 hours a day at my dev job... Absolute last thing I want to do at lunch or hiking is fool around with a phone. Don't even have a data plan as it won't get used.

I wonder if this isn't just a phase. We're just trying our new toys to the max until we give it a proper place.

I've almost completely stopped doing this (taking pics of everything, twittering, constantly checking my phone). It wasn't a conscious decision, and I'm not a particularly social or active person, it's not like suddenly rediscovered "living in the moment". Also, I'm still just as prone to look for constant distraction (hello HN...).

I just got bored with it. Bored with doing it myself, and bored with following everybody else.

I was an early adopter, and for me the novelty has worn off. Maybe that will start applying to the masses soon enough too.

This is the reason why I'm still using my 6 year old nokia 'dumbphone'. I know as soon as I'll have a smartphone, I'll want to use it all the time.

You should get it soon and get it out of your system. At first you will want all the apps. Then likely none or very few. And you may only end up using apps that help overcome the inefficiencies of our society until those "wasteful" outdated systems are replaced. We should tend toward no apps. Or put another way, "The best user interface is no user interface."

I'm sorry, I always feel that if they are distracted by their tech and not socializing, they really don't want to socialize with you. I often use the book/phone/tech as an excuse to not socialize. I tell people to email me what they want (or reminders of what they said), family knows that IMing me is the best way to get a response from me. I'll add that I have social anxiety and I don't process verbal information well.

Feels weird watching this from my mobile phone. ;)

Look back a few years and there are people taking cigarette breaks every two minutes. Not sure why this would be worse.

I lived without a phone for 3 months.

It was like taking this barricade of social interaction away from me. I actually felt some anxiety over it at first.

Nowadays I just use my phone less, partly because I use Firefox OS, which is really stripped down version of what a smartphone can be. I'm happy that it yet does not have push notifications.

I thought I was bad, but I use my phone in only 1/5th of the instances shown here.

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