On a recent flight from Sydney to Melbourne, I was fascinated by the well dressed, educated male on the seat before me. He had a plethora of devices: iPhone, iPad, photocopied handouts of a substitute online paper, a print paper as well as the inflight magazine.
On the eighty minute flight he ploughed by everything before him. Nonetheless, I was intrigued not just by the active magazine on the iPad of his but also by his obliviousness to each of the passengers. As he regularly twitched, rubbed the hair of his and fidgeted, he also picked his ears on a number of occasions, pondered the wax on his finger then ate it.
Not only was I disgusted & quite shocked – in the end, that was absolutely no doddery aged male and have a pot belly and sprouting nose and ear hair who could be forgiven for senility. This person was in his early 30s, well dressed and naturally aware of style and image judging by the choice of his of black, well – fitted clothes. But selecting earwax and consuming it in public? Really? The picture of a well-manicured and cortexi complaints (visit the next page) coiffed gentleman dissolved in an instant. Here was a male so engrossed in technologies that he didn’t realise he was snacking on waxy discharge in public.
This made me wonder the reason he believed he was invisible when there was clearly a planeload of passengers around him. A common complaint by midlife women is that they are invisible. However, I’m able to nearly guarantee that when a well dressed, 50 year old lady began picking out her physical bits to consume in public, individuals would definitely notice.
So what made the man think that he’d entered a cocoon of privacy where he could eat and fidget away without someone noticing? Does having a set of technical devices capture the attention of ours that completely we forget the people surrounding us?
Partly it has something to do with the connection we form with technology. We quickly personalize our new devices with passwords, photos, downloads and then interact rapidly with social media. Technology permits us to disregard outdoors stimuli so that we’re submerged in a world where only 2 things exist: the interface and ourselves.
Technology is the perfect companion; it does what we want, when we would like and wherever we want. We create a brand new reality and feeling of being when we enter technology’s lure as well as, similar to the ancient Greek sirens, it’s extremely tough, once ensnared, to let go.
The drawback of technology is the fact that we’re able to become oblivious of our immediate surroundings, the existence of people and the environment.
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