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This is as creepy as it sounds.
I’m the kind of person who likes to watch other people.
Spotting humans in their natural habit, doing human-like things, has always fascinated me.
Now, I’m not saying that I go places I don’t belong, but when I’m out and about on my own, my head is on a swivel — and I take it all in.
It’s amazing what you can see when your head isn’t always tilted downward, towards technology.
My latest fascination has been to watch people, out in public, as they use their “smart” devices.
I ask myself these questions:
Do they breathe when they tap away the screen? (Most hold their breath.)
Do you they sigh and frown after they put the phone down? (Many do.)
One of the neat tricks I’ve learned over the past year, during this dawn of a new and ubiquitous technological age, is that when people are immersed in their devices, they have no idea what is going on in the space around them.
When I’m alone and observing my fellow humans, I like to see if I can spot someone who will become an unwitting participant in my science experiment.
What I do is this.
I spot someone who is ambling along while using a smartphone. The person saunters as they tap, and it is clear that the mind is not on the path ahead — but in the entrails of the device in the hands.
I see them drawing nearer, walking down the sidewalk, and I know they don’t see me. They don’t even sense me.
So I approach the person, step by step, until I’m a few feet away.
Then, instead of being the one to step out of the way, I just stop. Right there. In front of the person with the phone.
Like clockwork — I’ve, unfortunately, had the opportunity to do this many times — the person gets within a half-foot away of me. Then, it is this moment I assume that my unknowing dance partner spots my feet in his or her peripheral vision, a wispy phantasm appearing at the edge of the screen of the phone.
It is precisely this moment that the person-with-phone’s head jolts up to meet my sinister gaze.
The look of utter bewilderment I observe is indescribable.
At first, I thought that the looks I got were ones of embarrassment, but now I realize that I was just projecting what I thought these distracted dawdlers should be feeling at the moment when they realize they are about to walk right into me.
Now I think that the looks I get represent something else.
There’s confusion from the disorienting glance from person to phone and back to sidewalk ahead. It’s as if so much attention was given to the technological device in the person’s hand that the forced splitting of attention produces a temporary bout of mental and physical vertigo.
I see all of this happening.
I see the progression of the movements until my science experiment is carried out with methodical precision to its eerily similar end result, time after time.
Most times, not even a word is uttered by the person who almost walks into me. And why would I expect there to be?
It’s as if the participant in my natural lab experiment is nestled in a deep slumber, a somnambulist drifting aimlessly in a sea of sameness.
The novelty of my existence dares to break through the dream — but often fails.
And that’s what it feels like to me. I feel like a failure.
I’m not sure what I’m hoping for when I do this.
A knowing look of acknowledgment that I was playing a trick? A word of appreciation that I dared to create a human moment?
Occasionally, there will be words of apology, but they are often muttered through a half-open mouth as the head goes back down to the phone, like a marionette’s neck propelled by flimsy strings.
I watch these things.
I create these “interactions” to entertain myself because I’m horrified that I can observe users of technology like a lab scientist observes his specimen.
I like seeing how people occupy their time. I like to analyze what motivates them. I enjoy seeing how a person’s panoply of emotions are reflected on the screens of smartphones.
I’m past the point of thinking that the world will go back to a time before the addiction to technology.
I know it’s here to stay.
And I know I too am connected to devices more now than I ever was.
But I hope that I’m intentional about how I use them.
I hope that I’m thinking about how using technology every day impacts me.
I hope that I’m not the only one thinking about this.
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This post was originally published on Medium.com and is republished with the author’s permission.
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