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Everywhere we look, people are busy with their mobiles. Social situations fail to attenuate phone use, and, for so many commentators, this spells the end of traditional human relations as we know them. “What has happened,” they say, “to the scene of the family gathered around the table or the hearth, to people conversing with each other in public places, to the passion for the person in front of one rather than the one at the other end of the Wi-Fi?”
How awful to be so distracted from the richness of human life, and yet, we could object, hasn’t one of the principal aims of human life always been precisely to abstract oneself from situations of proximity with one’s fellow humans—even those we love? The mums and dads on their mobiles in playgrounds aren’t necessarily bad parents, just doing what humans do: finding ways—through religion, music, craft, technology—to be somewhere else.
When car phones became a feature of popular culture in the 1980s, a recurring scene could be witnessed in TV sketch shows, films, and even on the streets: a flashily dressed man in an open-top car talks loudly into his phone, broadcasting details of his share dealings and very successful love life. We then see that the phone is not plugged in. Today, an almost inverted process takes place. People text furiously in a public place, with facial expressions of great purpose, yet all they are doing is deleting old messages or typing in random letters and numbers on their phones. Their phone is not “plugged in,” as it were, yet this, for them, is the whole point. The attachment to their device allows them to abstract themselves from the situation they are in—to be absent while nonetheless physically present.
This process often explains the sudden receipt of unexpected texts from an old friend or acquaintance. If you are surprised and delighted to be contacted out of the blue—usually in the early evening or late at night—it may signal less an authentic outpouring of love or a reaching-out to a true companion than a desperate attempt to find one more person to send a message to. The person texting you may well be in a public place, surrounded by others, with a look of fierce concentration on their face as they type out their inane greeting. Beyond the demonstration that one is important and connected to others, the texting allows an exit from the situation of proximity.
