I had to travel recently and when I deplaned I looked for a driver sent for me.
The driver was carrying a sign with my name on it, but as I approached him I noticed that he was talking to himself, very animatedly. As I got closer, I realized he had one of those Bluetooth wireless phones clipped to his ear and was deep in conversation. I pointed at myself as the person he was supposed to meet. He nodded and went on talking to whomever was on the other end of his phone.
When my luggage arrived, I grabbed it off the belt; he pointed toward the exit and I followed, as he kept talking on his phone. When we got into the car, I said, ?Do you know my hotel?? He said, ?No.? I showed him the address, and he went back to talking on the phone.
After the car started to roll, I saw he had a movie playing on the screen in the dashboard ? on the flat panel that usually displays the G.P.S. road map. I noticed this because between his talking on the phone and the movie, I could barely concentrate. I, alas, was in the back seat trying to finish something on my laptop. When I wrote all that I could, I got out my iPod and listened to a Stevie Nicks album, while he went on talking, driving and watching the movie.
After I arrived at my hotel, I reflected on our trip: The driver and I had been together for an hour, and between the two of us we had been doing six different things. He was driving, talking on his phone and watching a video. I was riding, working on my laptop and listening to my iPod.
There was only one thing we never did: Talk to each other.
It?s a pity. He was a young, French-speaking African, who probably had a lot to tell me. When I related all this to my friend, an editor,he quipped: ?I guess the era of foreigners talking to taxi drivers is over. The taxi driver is now too busy.He’s right. You know the old story, ?As my driver said to me about the upcoming elections … ? Well, you can forget about that anymore. My driver was too busy to say hello, let alone opine on politics.
I relate all this because it illustrates something I?ve been feeling more and more lately ? that technology is dividing us as much as uniting us. Yes, technology can make the far feel near. But it can also make the near feel very far. For all I know, my driver was talking to his parents in Africa. How wonderful! But that meant the two of us wouldn?t talk at all. And we were sitting two feet from each other.
When I shared this story with a friend, a technologist who once labeled the disease of the Internet age ?continuous partial attention? ? two people doing six things, devoting only partial attention to each one ? she remarked: ?We?re so accessible, we?re inaccessible. We can?t find the off switch on our devices or on ourselves. … We want to wear an iPod as much to listen to our own playlists as to block out the rest of the world and protect ourselves from all that noise. We are everywhere ? except where we actually are physically.?
Wassup with this?