Earlier quoted context omitted.
I agree but some of these things sound like moral panics about black rectangles. I don't remember people shaking their heads at parents reading a paperback book at the park, or commuters reading broadsheet newspapers on the train.
As a transhumanist, I see the recent advertisement campaign for device-free dinners as an implicit accusation that devices necessarily inhibit interpersonal engagement rather than enhance it. A device-free social event makes as much sense to me as having an equipment-free sporting event. Imagine playing baseball without bats, balls, or gloves. Imagine soccer without balls or goals. The family dinner with meaningful c…
They do inhibit it.
I think it's funny that we live in this amazing world of sights, smells, movement, filled with other animals and humans with all sorts of physical and social activities to choose from, but instead we choose to take the blue pill so we can look at a tiny glass square displaying mostly advertising and trivialities, with a horrible user interface.
The only explanation I can think of is that phones are addictive. Smartphones set up a reward system that displaces more enjoyable and useful behaviours.
It's like we've become those people tethered to slot machines at a casino continuously swiping at these devices. They don't even 'pay out' most of the time. It's sad.
I'd prefer to just be a human, thanks.