The other morning on the BTS Skytrain I found myself bemused at the sight of nearly every one of my fellow passengers in thrall to digital devices. Each was oblivious to all the others as they pawed away at Facebook pages, e-mails, tweets, games, music and phone calls. One young renegade was actually reading a book.
More than bemused, I was struck by the sense I was living in a science-fiction story. But then, resisting the impulse to check my own iPhone, which was tucked inside my computer bag, I was struck by a thought. (The kind of thing that can happen when you divorce yourself, however briefly, from the digital web.*) I had a sudden recollection of the London-Oxford train, circa late 1970s, bearing its ranks of dark-suited, bowler-hatted men from the City, each absorbed in his own copy of The Times of London.
Not totally absorbed, mind you. Occasionally indignant squalls would thrash through the forest of newsprint in face of the rogue colonial invader (me) in his torn Lee corduroy jacket and scruffy jeans, who would like as not be reading a volume of essays by some notorious Continental thinker, some crackpot wog from the other side of the Channel.
Then, as on the BTS now, I sometimes felt myself a dilettante anthropologist at large in another world. But where the London-Oxford train was merely amusing, why did I find the Skytrain scenario also chilling? Was it an apprehension of what these ever-accelerating changes might portend for a more distant future that suddenly seemed not so distant after all?
Or maybe I just felt excluded. I should have whipped out my own smartphone and got engaged, eh? Like, get with it, man. I could’ve plugged myself into a Heidegger lecture. Sure. Or browsed the Web for a photo of British business people on a commuter train that I could use to illustrate a blog post that no one would ever look at.
Hey! What a good idea.
…
Related expressions of unease:
Getting away from it all: Now and then
Illustrations:
People with phones on BTS from the Bangkok Post.
Businessmen on train from the Independent.
* Getting struck by a thought may not be without its dangers. See, e.g., The Apocalypse (http://thisistheapocalypse.com).
Reading a book? In Thailand? Are you certain?
It was on an iPad, of course. And there were lots of pictures. Okay, so it was manga.
I looked at it.