Many scholars attribute the fall of the
Roman Empire to a slow decline in morals and
values. Will mobile devices be the
source of our own decline for the same reasons?
What has always contributed to human
progress has been our empathy and compassion for each another. Good doesn’t always triumph over evil, but it
does keep it in check. And by and large,
I believe compassion comes from witnessing human pain, either emotional or
physical, and observing the eclectic world around us in all its forms. But mobile devices have isolated people from
their surroundings much like the feudal castles in the Dark Ages.
I don’t get into New York City much, but two recent visits
gave me an appreciation of how disconnected people have become from one
another.
The first was a Yankee game. At the risk of sounding old, I used to
appreciate the simplicity of the idle time between innings, hearing just the
chatter of spectators reverberating through the stadium along with barking
vendors selling hot dogs, beer, or ice cream.
Just watching others was enriching.
Today, it’s a sensory bombardment of images and sounds on jumbo screens. People don’t see or engage each other in
person. Instead, much of what they
experience is through an electronic screen, either jumbo or palm sized.
The second visit included a long trip
on the subway, my first in a great many years.
Again, I used to marvel at the diversity of people sandwiched together:
the interaction of a mother and her baby,
an eight-year-old boy’s idolizing glance at a cool teen walking by, or
two lovers flirting. Much of this is
lost today. There’s no interaction or
observation. It’s just a crowd of
isolated people absorbed in their own handheld devices.
Many of those enthralled by these
devices speak of their indispensability, but less than a decade ago their lives
were fine without them. These devices
don’t address a need, they create a need, or you could say, an addiction. As the economist Kenneth Galbraith said, “We
are becoming the servants in thought, as in action, of the machine we have
created to serve us."
They are even redefining social
etiquette. People see no fault in
responding to a call, email, or text while at social gatherings with family or
friends. Attendees at business
conferences do not consider it rude to be reading electronic correspondences
while a front-of-the-room speaker tries to engage the audience. The technology has defined what is socially
acceptable and what it not. And it’s
making us more selfish and inconsiderate.
All this has happened with alarming speed.
No longer do we challenge our minds to
recall information or to simply reason.
We don’t need to think because all the supposed answers are at our
fingertips. Like the use of any type of
crutch, prolonged use can actually damage the part of the body it is intended
to help or support.
Our personal experiences no longer
shape our views. Instead, they come from
the limited and often biased conveyance of information through media or
truncated messages on social networks.
Losing a familiarity with one another
and the diverse communities around us could lead to a desensitization of
humanity and with it a loss of empathy for our fellow man. No good can come of that.
The addiction to these devices is so
pervasive and powerful, I don’t see much promise in our immediate future as
bleak as that may sound. The only hope
is that people make a concerted effort to wean themselves and their children
off their reliance on such devices in all areas of their lives. Otherwise, our future is a dark one.
