The Virtual and the Actual
Comments: 4
If, as John Perry Barlow famously said, cyberspace is where you are when you’re on the telephone, then mobile phones represent the first real and widespread encroachment of the virtual upon the actual. Real because the physical consequences are real and apply to other people (I’ve had more than a few close calls with drivers or riders using phones). Widespread because an astonishing number of people move about in public in body only, their minds sucked through the opaque membrane separating public space from the portable chat room to which they’ve retreated. Perhaps walking and chewing gum would be easier.
Stepping from a train onto a platform the other day and finding the beeline to the stairs repeatedly blocked by people who, having entered the low gravity of a telephone call, seemed to have gone into slo-mo or were just drifting altogether, the realisation struck me with the revelatory force that the blindingly obvious so often uses to announce its presence. It’s been there for years, of course, but now it really has become a thing. Everywhere people whose minds are still in their bodies are dodging and tripping over those who have sequestered theirs elsewhere. For the first time, the virtual has become a force to be negotiated in public (and daily — dozens of times a day). Millions of people are walking around encased in the gelatinous bubbles of their own private cyberspace, of the world, at least spatially, but not in it.
I have no idea what it means, this assualt by the virtual on the actual, but I just thought the moment historic enough to mark.
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Posted to General Rants • 2003.07.11 (Fri) • 11:18
Comments
Posted by Andy Baio 2003.07.11, 11:50
You think that’s bad? Wait until people have wireless Internet access on their sunglasses.
But no worries… The subsequent generation of kids raised on the new technology should be able to gracefully navigate their virtual and real spaces without fumbling around like their awkward parents.
Posted by pixelkitty 2003.07.11, 11:59
Sounds like a William Gibson novel - both your description and the actual experience.
Not a bad thing, not a good thing. Just a thing.
I zone out a lot, without the aid of portable devices. Scary, really.
Posted by Keitai SloMo Bubble Bobble 2003.07.11, 14:42
Sure its annoying when people drop into keitai slo-mo when in front of you, but its not half as annoying as the $#%%$# smeggers who light up a cigarette and subsequently engulf you in a clod of foul smoke.
Posted by Amol Hatwar 2003.07.12, 05:57
This post of your’s is gonna turn me to a regular visitor.
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