I’ve just got a new car. It’s pretty good. It’s got loads of buttons that do lots of things, and of course, because it’s new, it’s incredibly shiny. Nice.
But before this I was part of the commuting class that stands shoulder to shoulder waiting for trains and busses. I didn’t mind it actually, if anything it was refreshing. I stood and looked at the world. I watched people, I watched things happen and I watched an incredible trend in motion.
This isn’t a revelation by any stretch of the imagination; I’m making no proclamations that I’ve spotted a trend never before realised. In actuality, everyone’s talking about it and the BBC have even produced an article with statistics. However, I watched people stare into their phones. Endlessly.
I can’t believe how much conviction people show to staring at the their little portals of W3. When I was small, my grandmother used to take me on the train. I remember like it was yesterday the panicked instructions to mind the gap, and even now I always step an extra six inches when getting on or off a train. Just in case. I watch now as people don’t break eye contact in the perpetual download of information. Gap between the train and platform? Not important. Busy road crossing? Meh. Driving a car? OK, I’ll devote a bit of time to it…
My point here is. The world is bustling, there’s so much going on around us and yet we let overpaid teenagers filter what we see.
I’ve made a concerted effort to not using my phone. I want to watch the world in real time and not let facebook turn my life into a social experiment. In fact I’ve gone as far as diverting all my own phone calls to my blackberry where beautifully there are no streams or walls or trends.
I deal with sights, sounds and smells where once I concentrated on pixels, posting and profiles. And it’s wonderful.
Turns out, life is in real-time 3D!
