Connected but Isolated

Telecommunications companies want you to believe that their wireless gadgets make you better connected and more in-touch.

But do they?

Yes, you can talk, or send text messages, to the people you aren't with whenever you want with these gizmos, but this requires you to choose between paying attention to remote disembodied voices instead of your surroundings and all those people who occupy your surroundings.

And that sounds a little disconnected to me.

These people I see, who wander around, clinging to little metal boxes that they intermittently stop to type on, or who chatter to invisible people through the gadgets strapped to their ears, seem more oblivious than connected.

A while back, I was waiting in line at the grocery store, involuntarily listening to someone blather on and on about how to clean up the cat's vomit from his living-room floor, when I noticed that not only did the, very loud, voice not seem to be talking to anyone at all, but the line wasn't moving either. A dozen people in front of me, at the head of the line, I saw someone gesticulating wildly while talking to his phone. The cashier couldn't get his attention, and so she couldn't tell him that his groceries were bagged and it was time to pay and let the rest of us have a chance to check out.

The line kept getting longer, and this guy kept getting louder, until a store manager grabbed his arm, to get his attention, and pointed out the cashier to him. So, this guy was probably embarrassed by the situation and turned off his gadget, right? Wrong. He started shouting at the employees instead. Couldn't they see he was on the phone? Who did they think they were? He had more important people to talk to than them; that's what his cell phone was for.

And, oddly enough, he's right. That's exactly what cell-phones and hand-held computers are for. There really is no point to them if you don't use them in public. You could just use your less-expensive land-line or home computer instead. These people aren't acting oblivious and rude because they don't care about courtesy; they're doing it because someone sold them these gadgets, and if they don't use them while they're in the middle of everyone else, then they'd have to admit that they just threw away a lot of money. So, you guessed it, they're going to ignore and irritate everyone around them. That's what they paid for, and that's much easier than recognizing that these gadgets disconnect and isolate rather than contact and connect.

As abrasive as they are, I still feel sorry for these folks. After all, phones are irritating enough when they're just sitting in a corner of the room, occasionally interrupting whatever we're doing with their incessant ringing. But, these people, they actually bought phones and computers that follow them around, constantly ringing, buzzing, or playing some piercing tune, demanding that they pay attention to their gizmos instead of anything else.

It's hardly surprising that the American Sociological Review recently noticed that Americans' social skills have plummeted over the last few years, and that a startling number of people now say they feel more comfortable typing than speaking. What's more disconcerting is that, in only a few years, the average number of people without anyone to confide in has risen from one-in-ten to one-in-four. But then, who are you going to meet when you're constantly chatting with the same half-dozen invisible people on your gadget instead of the dozens, or hundreds, of people you run across, but pay little attention to, every day?

And how often have you had to dodge someone in traffic, or even in a hallway, because they were busy mucking around with some mobile-communications gadget instead of paying attention to their surroundings? A half a dozen times a day? A dozen? A couple dozen?

Ironically, the very same organizations that insist we buy this stuff seem to know that it doesn't really do what they say it does. A British telecom company recently banned internal text messages and intra-office calls after it noticed that its employees were spending almost a third of their time doing that instead of dealing with customers. After the ban, productivity rose, customer complaints decreased, and the company is now saving $1½ million a year in telecommunications charges.

So, maybe we should be listening to what this telecom's CEO is saying instead of what his marketers are telling us. Mobile communications aren't connecting us to more people, more efficiently, they're disconnecting us from our surroundings and our activities. And it's costing us more than just money.