h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Some time around the mid 80s I was having dinner at a caff in Hoxton, when Hoxton was still a decent place populated by the hoi polloi, riff raff, duckers and divers, bobbers and weavers, footpads, scoundrels, mountebanks, vagabonds and rapscallions, and the occasional intervention of the filth, before the bloody hipsters moved in and bands started shooting videos up and down the high street.

Any road up. There I was, noshing my meat and two veg when I noticed a parent walk past with a child who I would guess to have been around three or four years old. Kids at that age are inquisitive and talkative and want to know about everything they see, but that would have all been for nought in this case because the parent was wearing a personal stereo. The kid may as well have been on its own as far as any interaction was concerned and I thought that was one of the saddest things I'd ever seen. I've never forgotten it and I can still see it in my mind's eye.

Moving on to the present day, a year or two ago the people who manage this apartment complex fenced off the little grassed area below my balcony and turned it into a dog park. I frequently see dog owners down there ignoring their dog just the same way that parent was ignoring their child, only now, of course, it's not with a personal stereo, it's with a phone. I often see a couple from one of the apartments not only ignoring the dog but each other as they stand heads bowed, looking at the display and scrolling up and down with their thumbs while the dog listlessly walks around. A very different picture compared to engage with their dog, throw sticks or balls for it, play with it.

I'm not one of those people who think that radio/television/personal stereos/smartphones killed the art of conversation because I don't believe that people were ever conversing as much as those who make that assertion think. People used to do far more than talk to each other before the BBC was invented, and a lot of it was done in silence, such as reading books and newspapers, or contemplative activities that require some concentration (and a sticking out of the tip of the tongue), like embroidery.

So I'm kind of shooting down my own argument, but like most things it's not so much a matter either or, but where you think a particular line ought to be drawn. There are couples who've been together for years and are still able to go down the pub and spend the evening talking to each other, but there are plenty who can't and would sit in awkward silence for much of the time if they didn't spend some of it looking at the display of a phone or a laptop or a tablet, and that's not necessarily a Bad Thing as long as they do actually talk to each for some of the time.

After all, if we saw a couple at a pub with drinks in front of them and both reading a book or a newspaper, maybe a magazine, perhaps working on a cryptic crossword, and occasionally passing a word or two to each other, would it seem so awful? I don't think so. Ignoring your kid or your pet though, that's a different matter.

I didn't read the full article, but I did come across one the other day that posited that the reason today's youth spend so much time on computers and mobile devices is that they grew up in a culture of over-protection, that they weren't allowed to go out and play or hang out in the mall unattended and the main way they learned to socialize was online.

That's damn sad.

A few times, recently, when I've been invited* out, to the pub.... only to find the person I'm with wants to spend all* the time we're in teh pub, with someone else.... who isn't, of course in the pub... looking down at their phone... the entire evenign hence I useualy make a habbit, when I'm actually doing soemthing, of only very rarely checking Emails, twitter etc... and I'll only very* rarely get my phone out, whilst I'm in a pub, and only if I hear I've a TXT, and I'm not at that moment talking to someone... No real idea hwy it might be that it has seemingly taken over, for a lot of people, to quite the extent it has, at the expense* of other face-toface interactions I kinda grew up with computers... or at least what we called computers in the 80s, tehnce having had the same mobile number since 1998 I think it was... But, at the end of the day, maybe some of us can just accept, or regard such communications devices as 'tools', and for us to use, rather than seemingly becomeing slaves to the devices and methodolgies of communication themselves...
Misusing technologies, like the mobile phone, as many people now do, in public, is, IMO, just a failure of etakit... of decency and proper behavior... the same way as talking when ones mouth is full, or not being polite and curtious...

That makes perfect sense, although I have to say that I would probably fall into the latter of the two categories of the couples at the pub - the couple that wouldn't talk much, even though I'm of the generation who were out playing whenever the weather allowed it, unattended and often a good way from home. But that's because I've never been a great conversationalist anyway, for the most part.

Yeah, I've had a few evenings out like that too, 2legs. It can be a tool sometimes though. I have a drink with a certain friend once or twice a month and the laptop or phone comes out several times during the session in order to check something online, look at a YouTube video or a media file on the PC, find out who starred in a film, that sort of thing. But if you go to the pub and then spend most of your time with other people who aren't actually in the room, that's bang out of order.

And if you have the 'chat sent', 'chat received' sounds turned on and it keeps making that sound I will drop your phone in a pint of beer

Let me clarify that.

If you go to the pub with someone and then spend most of your time with other people who aren't actually in the room.

I used to like the Hobgoblin in Reading when I was there, don't know if it is still there.
Pub Rules
1. all mobile phones will be turned off or silenced.

2 1st offence stiff bollocking and growled at by the regulars.

3. 2nd offence phone goes in pint glass until it shuts up

4. 3rd offence phone nailed to wall

Oh... exactly; quickly looking at a mobile/checking online for something, as part* of a conversation your having, with someone in* the pub, OK.... spending all evenign TXTing, and phone calling someone who isn't in the pub, isn't on their way to the pub, and who the person your with, clearly* wants to be spending time with, other* than you, not OK... My useual night out, I send one or two TXTs whilst at the pub, whilst the friend I'm with is in the loo, or en-route to/back from the bar, I rarely do any 'online stuff', like tiwtter, whilst out, unless, say, for example, at a beer festavil, where I've been known too (though mainly often only because I'm looking for a TXT to try locate any one else we're meant to be trying to lcate in the busy beer festavil)

Those rules for a pub... and mobile phone usage therein... sound good to me