http://www.salon.com...ying_public_life/


(I suppose that it's too early to seriously map-out some amelioration of the side-effects of this ever-expanding Hive of the Obsessed..
But is this the End of the Beginning of.. actually thinking about it-all?)
It's merely mondo-annoyance for most.. but decidedly dangerous for the blind: this sleep-phoning mobile-coma thing.
Maybe almost as hazardous as the bloody-silent Hybrid cars.. creeping everywhere like the NSA-Personified.

Smartphones are killing us — and destroying public life
Hey, you -- look up! Our iPhone addictions are wrecking public spaces and fraying the urban social fabric
BY HENRY GRABAR

The host collects phones at the door of the dinner party. At a law firm, partners maintain a no-device policy at meetings. Each day, a fleet of vans assembles outside New York’s high schools, offering, for a small price, to store students’ contraband during the day. In situations where politeness and concentration are expected, backlash is mounting against our smartphones.

In public, of course, it’s a free country. It’s hard to think of a place beyond the sublime darkness of the movie theater where phone use is shunned, let alone regulated. (Even the cinematic exception is up for debate.) At restaurants, phones occupy that choice tablecloth real estate once reserved for a pack of cigarettes. In truly public space — on sidewalks, in parks, on buses and on trains — we move face down, our phones cradled like amulets.

No observer can fail to notice how deeply this development has changed urban life. A deft user can digitally enhance her experience of the city. She can study a map; discover an out-of-the-way restaurant; identify the trees that line the block and the architect who designed the building at the corner. She can photograph that building, share it with friends, and in doing so contribute her observations to a digital community. On her way to the bus (knowing just when it will arrive) she can report the existence of a pothole and check a local news blog.

It would be unfair to say this person isn’t engaged in the city; on the contrary, she may be more finely attuned to neighborhood history and happenings than her companions. But her awareness is secondhand: She misses the quirks and cues of the sidewalk ballet, fails to make eye contact, and limits her perception to a claustrophobic one-fifth of normal. Engrossed in the virtual, she really isn’t here with the rest of us.

[. . .]

So then, you seem to pass the Turing test--

Welcome aboard; new neurons can reform some habits--so long as they aren't configured as 'selling machines'.
Most here have been around ~an eon, in Intarweb-time.

On my Top-sentient-list since release..

(to his Son) This is the CAR-gun; how many times have I told you.. ...

Yep, satire and full exposure of T.P.C. (by-any-name)
Whenever I had to talk to a phone co. rep I'd ask, "Did you see The President's Analyst?"
If (usually a-) she Had: I'd get directly what I wanted, sans corporate-speak. Hey.. social engineering Before geek-speak.

The closing scene was indeed a priceless pic-in-pic.
Thanks for the reminder of when movies held Surprises (even though this one had piles of bodies, they weren't at all gory like modrin bloodbaths.)
--can't have gore in a comic (except for EC Comics, of course, but that was 15 years earlier.)