Not to blow my horn or anything, because there’s no way to verify it, but in those comfy days of yore when I had a higher paying and far more stressful job, I used to make of a variation of the material below part and parcel to my pitch for clients to buy tech stocks:
(Philly.com) — The authors observe what many of us have experienced: Friends invite us to get together only to spend the time texting other friends or tweeting. Everywhere, people are ignoring those in their physical vicinity so they can hold court with acquaintances farther away.
One unlikely source of insight into this bizarre situation comes from our cousins the monkeys. In his new book Games Primates Play, evolutionary biologist Dario Maestripieri makes the case that people are using technology to do what comes naturally to the human species — not to converse but to compete for status.
I didn’t use the word status, usually it was more a reference to socialize and social species. One idea I campaigned with on a regular basis using that angle were the Wintel Four: MSFT, CSCO, INTC, and DELL. It was of course the pure luck of the tech bubble that turned that idea into a money-maker so great one client said she was going to name her kid after me (She had a girl and didn’t follow through with Stephanie or any variant, but it’s the thought that counts).
Or it may be that we just have more in common (and hence to talk about) with the people that we selected from the pool of “everyone on the internet” as opposed to the much smaller pool of “people I’ve physically met”.
I’ve decided that the way to deal with people who are more enamored with that damned little screen than with company present is to disappear around the corner or out of the door, taking my twenty dollar flip-phone with me.
It’s becoming increasingly easier to talk with someone remotely than in person. Fucking phones are more important than my presence? Fine. Ring me up sometime. I’ll answer if I don’t have to interrupt a conversation with someone who is actually present and paying attention.