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Electronic devices, attention, and subtextual messages
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/17/fashion/17TEXT.html?_r=1&ref=technology&pagewanted=all
"Keep Your Thumbs Still When I’m Talking to You" by David Carr
This article (well, it's sort of a cross between an article and a personal opinion piece, I guess) discusses electronic device etiquette. It says what you might expect it to say: People stare into their little screens in public and with friends. Is this rude? Is it destroying social connections? Shouldn't we put our devices down more often?
Personally, I think these things should be worked out between the people who are trying to communicate with each other. I find it stressful to stare at screens and try to socialize at the same time, and I enjoy putting everything down and just sitting and taking the world in. But I don't care to tell other people what to do.
I also enjoy knitting while talking to someone and some people think that means I'm not paying attention to them, but in fact it helps me listen more closely (well, if I'm knitting something uncomplicated).
So I don't think that looking away from someone if they're talking is inherently ignoring them.
But I also know that I can't attend to two language streams at the same time, so texting while having a conversation might not be the same as knitting while having a conversation.
What really fascinates me, though, is the image that was chosen to accompany the article, which comes right after the title. A young conventionally attractive Asian woman is standing and using her electronic device, while a young conventionally attractive white man crouches in front of her, with his hand on her arm, and makes a "screeching in distress" face. Accompanied by the title "Keep Your Thumbs Still When I’m Talking to You," it seems like there is a subtextual race and gender message.
It's always been the case that there is a power dynamic involved in "who gets to divide their attention and who doesn't."
Other than that I'm not sure I can put the race and gender messages of the image into words.
Can you?
"Keep Your Thumbs Still When I’m Talking to You" by David Carr
This article (well, it's sort of a cross between an article and a personal opinion piece, I guess) discusses electronic device etiquette. It says what you might expect it to say: People stare into their little screens in public and with friends. Is this rude? Is it destroying social connections? Shouldn't we put our devices down more often?
Personally, I think these things should be worked out between the people who are trying to communicate with each other. I find it stressful to stare at screens and try to socialize at the same time, and I enjoy putting everything down and just sitting and taking the world in. But I don't care to tell other people what to do.
I also enjoy knitting while talking to someone and some people think that means I'm not paying attention to them, but in fact it helps me listen more closely (well, if I'm knitting something uncomplicated).
So I don't think that looking away from someone if they're talking is inherently ignoring them.
But I also know that I can't attend to two language streams at the same time, so texting while having a conversation might not be the same as knitting while having a conversation.
What really fascinates me, though, is the image that was chosen to accompany the article, which comes right after the title. A young conventionally attractive Asian woman is standing and using her electronic device, while a young conventionally attractive white man crouches in front of her, with his hand on her arm, and makes a "screeching in distress" face. Accompanied by the title "Keep Your Thumbs Still When I’m Talking to You," it seems like there is a subtextual race and gender message.
It's always been the case that there is a power dynamic involved in "who gets to divide their attention and who doesn't."
Other than that I'm not sure I can put the race and gender messages of the image into words.
Can you?
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As is, the girl might be oblivious to a parent or other authority -- but the man isn't acting like one. If someone was really screaming for her attention, she'd at least look annoyed. ;-)
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Which sums up perfectly the real issue (IMO) behind articles like this: Anxiety (particularly men's anxiety) about being able to get what one wants or needs from other people (particularly women) when every five minutes there are more new things to pay attention to.
I'm 52 and have a certain set of expectations about what's polite in the attention-giving department. (And I have the perspective to know that I can change my expectations if I want to.) I would assume that a 32-year-old and a 12-year-old would each have completely different expectations, and a sense that their expectations were/should be the norm.
Since I can remember an era when there were far fewer attention-demanding devices, I can conceive of a world in which people don't need to be texting or emailing or facebooking all the time. Hence I can choose not to engage with these things or buy these devices. (I'm fortunate in that I don't have to have these things for work.) If I had kids, I would try to teach them about that choice, not that it would likely change the way they see things, especially given the lure of advertising and the force of peer pressure.
In other news, Obvious Malkin is obvious.
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