Digital Oblivion
The little black boxes we hold firm in our hands are no less than wormholes into which we have dived headfirst. In the process, we have traded our evolutionary gifts. If you’re not worried, you should be.
Has anyone else noticed that we reached a tipping point a while ago? That few of us now retain the mental fortitude to endure even five seconds of boredom, without reaching for our phones to pacify ennui?
It is now utterly epidemic. Everywhere you look without exception—on an elevator, in a subway, while driving or walking, in meetings and even at restaurants during normally intimate, social moments—we are not present. Instead, we are wherever the algorithms have taken us, down the wormhole.
The Chinese now have dedicated pedestrian lanes for what they call “heads down tribe”, complete with messages like “Please don’t look down for the rest of your life.” The German city of Augsburg has installed traffic lights embedded in the pavement to prevent pedestrians from walking into traffic.
It’s just the beginning.
In spite of our analog non-presence, we are mistaken if we believe that the time we spend in the wormhole is valuable. We are not actually fascinated by others’ meals…
