on smartphone zombies
New technology often brings irritations as well as conveniences.
Our consultants here at Five Colors include some with long memories; that is, they’re old enough to remember a former stage of technology. Nostalgia for a bygone age is normal among humans, even if the only thing to recommend the past was the fact that we were used to it. Our group is not much given to that emotion. Science is much easier to do now; we have no desire to go back to the days of log tables and slide rules. Nor are we actively seeking a John Henry moment (though we’ll happily take those that appear). We accept new technology as it comes, without complaint, since most of its apparent faults can be traced to people rather than machines.
But our navigator was pondering one technological phenomenon: the smartphone zombie. He finds it distinctly irritating, and rather than simply complaining he sought to understand why. You have all experienced these people: walking down the sidewalk they are engrossed in their smartphones, looking down at the screen and oblivious to the world around them. (Indeed, you may be one of them.) What is irritating about this? It’s not so much that they have checked out of local reality, which could be taken as an insult by someone who forms part of it; being ignored is the lot of most city dwellers most of the time, and generally it’s a good thing. It’s not the animated one-sided conversations, which are after all very similar to conversations one overhears between people who are both present (and not nearly as bad as those on buses, where we form a captive audience). It’s not those who are twitching or moaning along to music, who are relatively rare.
It is, he realized, that these people carry on down the sidewalk without any attempt to avoid others until they look up at the very last moment. Almost invariably, this means a near-collision, what the seagoing Rules of the Road call in extremis: waiting until both vessels must maneuver to avoid disaster. The irritation lies in the zombie implicitly assuming people will get out of the way, unless they accept a sudden shuffle within touching distance. Apart from offending his watchstanding soul (disciplined to take avoiding action early), it places a disproportionate responsibility for action on people who are aware of their surroundings. The fact that smartphone zombies don’t often actually hit anyone else is due mostly to other people staying out of the way. (In a couple of extreme cases we’ve seen zombies cross intersections against the light and force cars to stop to avoid hitting them.)
Now, there are no strict rules about walking down sidewalks. A zombie is not violating any ordnance by failing to keep a proper lookout. And, indeed, there are people who like to make others move out of the way, to whom doing less than their share is a win in the game of life. Our navigator has not met many out at sea; it’s a dangerous place at the best of times, and sailors are much disposed to cooperate. Perhaps the problem is that he’s unsuited to land navigation.
