The other night we were talking about how a number of great TV comedies were predicated upon a lack of cell phones. In Seinfeld for example, so many scenes are based on meeting up with someone at say, a theatre, and arriving but not seeing them and not knowing: are they here somewhere? Did they leave?
And we wondered, would that situational humour be funny to someone who had always known a world with cell phones? Would that premise make sense at all?
I consider myself lucky to have been born in the late seventies, in an era before cell phones and mass produced computers. Growing up with not a lot of money and in the country, my introduction to these technologies was even later than most of my cohort. It was not until 2005 at 25 years old that I got my first cell phone; and it was not smart! My husband got his first cell phone at 20 years old in 1995. Before that he had a pager that his casting agent would page and because he didn’t have a landline at the time, he’d have to rush off down the street to a pay phone, in order to respond.
In the world before cell phones, you would make plans to meet up with someone and if you were to arrive 10 minutes late and couldn’t find them you wondered: had they already arrived and left? Were they not there yet? But there was no way of knowing, so you simply waited. There was no one to text about it and no phone to stare at to pass the time.
But that’s no longer our reality. Certainly no longer mine. Phones and social media have trained us, via the positive reinforcement of operant conditioning, to pay constant attention to them. We’re totally addicted to the likes, to the blips and the bloops. We stare at our phone to pass the time. To fill the silence. To entertain us in transit. In the bathroom, on the couch, in bed at night and in the morning when we awake. I start to wonder, if I could change one thing about the world, undo one technological advance specifically, might it be cell phones?
Now I don’t mean all cell phones but rather smart phones specifically. You could still have a cell phone capable of making phone calls but that’s literally all it would do. No social media. No Facebook, Instagram, Twitter etc. No texting either. Too far?
What would be the point you ask? Well, you’d be less of an automaton, always checking your phone and more of a real, live person. Interacting with life with undivided attention. Fully engaged at dinner and at the bus stop. When you’d daydream and get swept away in your thoughts or imaginings, they would be your own for a change.
But I don’t see myself getting rid of my smart phone any time soon. And I am particularly fond of the pictures it takes. At the very least, it’s a wonderful, lightweight camera that’s always at the ready. For that I am grateful.
But I’m curious what you think. What advance would you undo, if any? Cell phones? Social media? Something else entirely? Or do you prefer to keep all these technologies and simply practice moderation? (Ha! Good luck weirdo).