>> "Take the metro / subway in any big, affluent city these days, and look around youself. What do you see? People whose eyes are glued to their phone screens, oblivious to the people around them, looking for "human warmth" in their virtual companion. That's really not the society I want to live in."
I agree with a lot of what you said but this isn't correct. True we all have out faces buried in our devices but before that we had them buried in newspapers. [0][1][2] No matter the decade people don't look for human warmth on public transport. They want to get on, look down, and get off.
I feel like when people write this they completely forget what life was like in college.
It's true that ever since the newspaper we've had trouble interacting with each other in certain contexts. Why does that difficulty seem to dramatically increase post-college?
Sure, when I was in college tons of people including myself used their phone in public. But there was a corresponding amount of more or less random and constant public interaction.
To me, this suggests that the problem has little to do with phones or newspapers or watches and everything to do with the design of a city. College campuses are human-scale; modern cities are not. College students are encouraged to room together and give up materialistic wealth; college graduates and working professionals are encouraged to spend as much of their net worth as they can on procuring their own private abode. College students can walk mostly anywhere they need to go; working professionals usually drive in armored vehicles for a significant portion of the day and often find that virtually nothing useful is in walking distance of their residence except other residences that they aren't allowed to approach without good reason.
There were plenty of discussions about human-scale cities here on HN (and I hope to see more of them) :)
One oft-quoted title is Christopher Alexander's "A Pattern Language", which advocates several building and design patterns, and ended up picked up mostly by the software engineering community.
You're completely right. Sorry, I should have been clearer. My conception of the "modern city" is very biased by the cities I've personally experienced, which are all US cities with the exception of Moscow (which I would rank as the most livable city I've ever personally lived in, due to its public transportation infrastructure and general density).
This comparison is specious and unfairly undercuts the ThePhysicist's point.
People of that generation, outside of commuting, were an exceptionally social generation. Family dinners being important and often required, where you shared your day. You didn't see the entire family sitting around the table with a newspaper like you see entire families at a restaurants with their noses buried in smartphones.
Where are those same people you see in these pictures today? Commuting in cars - ever more isolated than before. They rarely if even carpool.
Original replies point is excellent and well said and if you're trying to somehow compare newspapers and smartphones you're ignoring a looming social problem that is going to affect generations to come. We already see it's detrimental affects in trying to higher young people.
> "Where are those same people you see in these pictures today? Commuting in cars - ever more isolated than before. They rarely if even carpool."
No they're not. All 3 of the pictures shown appear to be from the New York area - the first one is a commuter train, nowadays the LIRR or the Metro North. The latter two pictures are of the NYC subway which, well, still exists.
The modern counterparts to the people in those pictures are still commuting by train, and like before people still didn't talk much with each other. The means of self-distraction have changed, but the nature of people have not.
This is pure rose-tinted glasses crap. North Americans have never treated public transport as a social gathering ground. This is a cultural problem, not one of urban design.
Another poster draws comparisons to college campuses, which strikes me as false also. I live in Manhattan, which is about as dense as this country gets, and my neighborhood has a population density of 25K per sq mi. Everyone walks everywhere, but yet the amount of social contact between complete strangers is pretty minimal. Certainly less than when I was in college.
Once again, it's cultural. If you convince people that talking to strangers is annoying and not-okay, it doesn't matter how tightly you pack them together or how many times a day you can throw them at each other. It just isn't gonna happen.
and the difference now is many of those whose faces are buried in their smartphones are likely communicating with someone.If anything people are communicating more.
From a small statistical sample of people I meet every day in public transport when going to and back from work, I can say that almost everyone looking at the phone is either texting or IM-ing (Facebook Messenger/Snapchat), and if not they're usually on Facebook (which I'd still classify as mostly communicating). Usually the only person I with a game on I can spot is myself playing Ingress, because the city centre is full of portals ;).
And in general, looking at my life and the life of my friends, cow-orkers and family, people are communicating hell and a lot more than they used to.
If anything is a problem, it's maybe not lack of but too much human interaction. People don't find time to think for even few minutes anymore, because there's always someone texting you, chatting to you or some interesting post to comment on.
There's a 9 year gap in age between my ex and I. One of the big differences between us is that while I'm addicted to my phone too, I don't tend to use it to send messages much. Unless I have agreed to be somewhere by a specific time, I won't text to say I'm late, for example. I won't fret about not hearing from someone. I think that difference to great deal is down to growing up with and without a cellphone - I was 20 when I got my first one, and it was another couple of years before I used it much outside of business calls.
I'm used to expecting hours and hours of "radio silence" from people even if they're late, or I'm late, because when I was a kid calling meant having to know where they'd be, and getting to a phone booth or somewhere I could borrow a phone. She grew up being used to being always contactable and able to contact.
I would count img as entertainment. Just read over some peoples shoulders.
I think you shared my point, that too much communication starts to be superficial. Subway is a undisturbed time, where reading news or books can be done. Indeed, if you want to communicate in a meaningful way, it makes sense to reload information from time to time.
> that too much communication starts to be superficial
Yes, I agree with that. I actually start thinking about clustering communication types in different ways that it is usually done. I'd say that writing paper letters, writing e-mails and even commenting on discussion boards or places like HackerNews are one type of communication, while face-to-face talk, phone call, texting and IM-ing is the other type (and of course IRC would be grouped with going to a bar).
One type of communication gives you time to articulate your thoughts and reflect on what you have to say. The other is about tight feedback loop, back-and-forthing little bites of thought and emotion. Both types are of course useful and important, but I'm starting to feel that the perceived "superficiality" of communication is people talking too much with each other, and not writing enough letters. Too much human warmth, not enough time to think.
Sure, our technology is a facilitator of this problem. But the nature of the problem is different than usually portrayed.
People are terrified of silence and lone time. Sadly this is what people actually need.
Challenge any of you to just leave your phone in the house on a Saturday and drive to a park and walk for 2 hours and on the way stop at some nice spot and sit alone for 20 minutes. You'll be shocked at how you feel mentally.
This is vastly dependent on country. And even area within the country. To a large extent I guess population density.
E.g. come to London. Take a train heading as far as possible out of town. With every stop, the "average face" will soften, you'll start seeing smiles. Then eye contact will become "acceptable". You may find people greeting you eventually.
Time of day/week also makes a huge difference. The overcrowded commuter trains are awful. Except Friday afternoon, when the atmosphere at least on the long distance commuter trains out of London tends to be completely different.
Or go to Paris, and people will be far more open to eye contact from the outset.
I agree with a lot of what you said but this isn't correct. True we all have out faces buried in our devices but before that we had them buried in newspapers. [0][1][2] No matter the decade people don't look for human warmth on public transport. They want to get on, look down, and get off.
[0] http://img.qz.com/2014/01/baghi49cyaaz2ps.jpg?w=1024&h=714 [1] http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2012/05/01/article-2137695-12... [2] https://www.wodumedia.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/Riders-...