Privacy, for me, isn’t about secrecy in my own life; it’s about shielding myself from the constant oversharing of everyone else’s. While I appreciate technology that enhances personal privacy, I’m wary of developments that force unwanted interaction and impose on personal space. If you find joy in meticulously crafting your Facebook persona, prefer digital books to the tactile experience of paper, or consider Grand Theft Auto IV high art, that’s your prerogative – just keep it to yourself and out of my space.
It’s the intrusive technologies that truly bother me, the persistent annoyances that chip away at our collective well-being. Airport televisions are a prime example. Barely watched by a fraction of travelers (unless sports are on), they inflict a constant barrage of noise and distraction on the majority. Year after year, airport after airport, they represent a subtle but steady decline in the quality of travel for everyone else. Another grievance is the planned obsolescence of superior software, replaced by inferior, bloated alternatives. I still lament the demise of WordPerfect 5.0 for DOS, a word processor so efficient and elegant it’s practically unusable on modern machines. While you can technically run it in a Windows emulator, the tiny, crude window feels like a deliberate insult from Microsoft to those of us who value functionality over superfluous features. WordPerfect 5.0, though basic for desktop publishing, was unparalleled for writers who simply wanted to write. Elegant, bug-free, and remarkably compact, it was crushed by the feature-laden, intrusive, monopolistic, and crash-prone Word. If I hadn’t hoarded old 386s and 486s, I wouldn’t be able to use WordPerfect at all. And even those relics are dwindling. Yet, people are inconvenienced if I can’t open their Word documents. We’re in a Word-dominated world now, I’m told. Time to accept the inevitable.
But these are minor irritations. The technological advancement that has inflicted genuine, lasting social damage – the one you risk ridicule for criticizing – is the cell phone.
A mere decade ago, New York City, my home, still offered public spaces where people respected communal peace by keeping their private lives private. The incessant chatter hadn’t yet conquered every corner. Owning a Nokia could still be seen as a status symbol, a pretentious affectation, or even a kind of dependence. In the late 1990s, New York witnessed a swift societal shift from nicotine to cellular addiction. The pocket bulge went from cigarettes to cell phones. The nervous hand fidgeting with a cigarette became a hand clutching a device, engaged in a “crucial” conversation with someone not present. Kids once gathered around the first pack of cigarettes; then, it was the first color screen phone. Travelers used to light up the moment they deplaned; now, they speed-dial. Pack-a-day habits morphed into hundred-dollar monthly phone bills. Smoke pollution became sonic pollution. The irritant changed, but the suffering of the considerate majority at the hands of the inconsiderate minority – in restaurants, airports, and public spaces – remained disturbingly consistent. Back in 1998, shortly after quitting smoking, I’d observe subway riders nervously handling their phones, chewing on antennae, or clutching them like lifelines. I felt a strange pity. It was still unclear how far this trend would go: would New York become a city of phone addicts, sleepwalking through life in clouds of private noise, or would public restraint somehow prevail?
Predictably, restraint lost. The cell phone’s triumph was absolute. Its downsides were bemoaned in essays and op-eds, complaints grew louder as abuses worsened, but that was it. Grievances were noted, token gestures were made (“quiet cars” on trains, polite signs in restaurants), and then cellular technology was free to wreak further havoc, criticism deemed passé and uncool. “Old man yells at cloud,” went the cultural understanding.
But familiarity doesn’t lessen the anger of drivers stuck behind someone oblivious in the passing lane, engrossed in a phone call and blocking traffic. Yet, our consumer culture tells this oblivious driver they’re right, that we’re the ones missing out on the “freedom” and “connectivity” of unlimited minutes. Commercials imply that our annoyance stems from our own lack of fun. Why can’t we just lighten up, pull out our own phones, join a “Friends and Family” plan, and have a better time ourselves, right there in the passing lane?
Socially oblivious individuals don’t suddenly become considerate when critics are silenced. They become ruder. A growing national annoyance is the shopper who remains glued to their phone during checkout. In my Manhattan neighborhood, this often involves a privileged young woman and a less advantaged cashier of similar age. It might seem elitist to expect interaction with your cashier, yet basic courtesy dictates acknowledging their existence as a person. While some clerks may seem indifferent to being ignored, many are visibly irritated or saddened when a customer can’t disconnect from their phone for even a moment of human interaction. Unsurprisingly, the offender, like the oblivious driver, is blissfully unaware of any offense. In my experience, the longer the line, the more likely they are to pay for a trivial purchase with a credit card. And not a quick tap-to-pay card, but the kind that requires waiting for a printed receipt, then – with zombie-like slowness – fumbling to shift the phone, awkwardly pinning it between ear and shoulder, signing the receipt, all while continuing their phone conversation about whether they really want to meet that Morgan Stanley guy at the wine bar again.
There is one minor positive outcome to these worsening behaviors. While the idea of civilized public spaces as valuable resources is fading, there’s a small comfort in the fleeting, impromptu communities of shared suffering that these behaviors create. Catching the eye of another driver steaming with frustration, or exchanging a knowing glance with an annoyed cashier – it offers a small sense of solidarity in an increasingly inconsiderate world.
