My slow-growing epiphany began in 1996. I stood in an elevator cage silently with four other men in a building in Tel Aviv. Suddenly, someone’s mobile telephone rang; and all four men reached for their pockets. At the time, I did not own one of the devices; and ring tones did not have the wild variety that they have today. I remember chuckling at the spectacle of grown men speechless in each other’s presence – except for the guy on the telephone, divulging personal information as if there was no tomorrow and we were not all standing a few feet from him with nothing else to do but listen.
I am certain that the insights of my still-growing epiphany about the dark side of technology are points shared by many others: businesspeople, educators, restaurateurs, pastors and rabbis, hôteliers, librarians, and friends and family members of those acquaintances seemingly addicted to their mobile devices. If Dick Tracy and Batman were similarly addicted to their gadgets, Hollywood has refrained thus far from telling us: only their marvels are revealed on the silver screen.
We all have concerns to share. Kreg Ettenger, a professor of anthropology at the University of Southern Maine, warns his students in his course syllabus: “Smartphones, iPads, laptop computers and other electronic devices are not to be used in the classroom due to the extreme distraction they cause to users and those around them … If I see a student using [such] a device, I will first ask him or her to stop. The second time I will ask for the student to either give me the device or leave the classroom, whichever they prefer.” I wish we could apply this warning to every public place.
And what about private or intimate settings? Some of my friends are so addicted to their devices that they cannot resist taking them into their dining rooms, kitchens, bedrooms, and even bathrooms! There seems no place in their lives off-limits to such intrusiveness. I’ve had meals with friends, just the two of us, with most of the time spent, not in the breaking of bread with each other, but watching them text or listening to them talk on their phones. When I have objected, the reaction, invariably, has been, “Bruce, you don’t understand. I am very busy.” The message is, unequivocally, NOT about busyness. It’s about priorities. It’s about dependency. It’s about boundaries. It’s about the absence of the sacred in our lives.
Personally, I don’t want, and try not to allow, this kind of technology into the intimate spaces of my life (for example, sharing meals, love-making, praying, visiting, reading, classroom learning, museum touring, or hiking in a wild place). Those who call or text me at such times simply must wait their turn. Otherwise, how do I renew my spirit, nurture my mind, heighten my soul, and enrich my life with the gift of other?
On a recent expedition into a remote part of northern Mexico, so far-flung that the location – a six-hour drive from the nearest hospital – had no cell phone coverage or even electricity, I shared this restorative place with close friends and colleagues. In many ways, it was a glorious five days uninterrupted by telephones, a time of deep meditation in the wilderness: at night, the Milky Way burning brightly overhead, traversed with shooting stars, and howling choruses of coyotes breaking the desert silence; during the day, vigilant prairie dogs entertaining us, and the sun scorching an already parched landscape.
We friends focused on each other and on the natural wonders that surrounded us. If the technology had allowed, however, I do question if we could have resisted its siren call from the routines we left behind. Yet, as soon as we had made our ways back into our familiar technology-rich worlds, the texting and telephoning started up once again with a bitter urgency.
To use such devices nimbly requires a vast knowledge and skillfulness, to be sure, but does it not also require wisdom, an ethical sense, and a clear-minded resolution of balance? We seem to have become savants of technology miserable and enfeebled in its aftermath, governed by a law of diminishing returns in our progress as individuals and society.
Naomi Baron, a professor at American University, noted in her 2010 essay, “The Dark Side of Mobile Phones,” that “History is replete with examples of new products – or technologies – that may initially meet with enthusiasm, but later reveal unanticipated negative consequences … Mobile telephony is another Janus-faced technology. Mobile phones offer users enormous freedom to communicate on their own terms (regarding place and time). Yet the reverse side of the Faustian bargain is that people find themselves at the beck and call of others, struggling with the perceived social necessity of being always on.” It seems the most difficult challenge for many mobile telephone users is the daunting, even heroic, ability to thump the “off” button.
Our smart phones have inadvertently created dumb users – or at least numbed users. It’s time now to re-emphasize the value of actual (versus virtual) presence, living in the gifted moment at hand. In Mexico, folks call the many stand-by modes of appliances diablitos or “little devils” as they drain away electrical current and increase utility bills. Similarly, mobile telephones are also diablitos as they drain away our intimacy with others and deplete our inner reserves to be effective communicators. My slowly-growing epiphany about mobile telephones is that their value may not exceed their diminishment of who we are as Human Presence in a society that has lost its moorings.
H. Bruce Rinker, Ph.D.
Ecologist, Educator, and Explorer
Dr. Rinker speaks for me and many others like me. I do not have a cell phone and see no need for one. I do not need to talk on the phone in my car, in a restaurant or at the dinner table. People who talk or text while in the company of others are just plain rude. I have told my grandchildren (and my children) that while a cell phone is useful in an emergency while traveling there is no need to walk around in a store or library or other public place, with a phone glued to their ear and interrupting nearby conversations with their own.
Reading over his I can’t help but think of days and nights when we were children.No cell phones and just a party line phone which we had to have permission from Mom and Dad to use..Lots of reading and listening to the radio at night after dad came home from work and dinner and baths were over or when we were smaller catching lightning bugs and putting them in a jar..Children now days are so wrapped up in their phones and messaging one another or their computer games they don’t know how to have fun without them .We all need to stop and spend time just talking in person and listening… and as i heard this morning it is everyone duty to take care of our planet or we may not have a planet to take care of . What happens to all the plastic phones used and discarded??makes me stop and wonder!