We are all becoming phone-starers

Booklover Nury Vittachi reveals why he joined the phone-gazers

Have you noticed them? Every big city you go to these days, you see people staring at mobile telephones.

They walk absently down the street, eyes glued to tiny screens.

They walk off railway platforms, they stroll off cliffs, they die horrible deaths, or, worse still, they bump into me.

I have a newspaper cutting about a 17-year-old woman in Seattle who was so absorbed in her phone that she didn’t notice the approach of a train that ran her over.

There's a woman I see on the way to work whose eyes never leave her phone. I realized it was only a matter of time before she walked into a hole in the road. For weeks, I seriously considered getting up early and digging a hole in the road myself, just so I could watch my prophecy come true.

*
Why have I been sneering at these people? I could see why they would want to escape from the dullness of commuting, but staring at phones seemed so naff. Phone entertainment stinks. I’ve checked it out. Even on fancy 3G services, you get tiny, fuzzy images, childish games and over-priced sports clips.

*
And then, one dark day, something happened that changed my mind for ever.

I was on a business trip as usual, jumping from plane to plane, when I found myself running late for a connection. There was no time to stop at the airport bookshop.

I made it through the departure gate a fraction of a second before it closed. It was like Indiana Jones rolling under that descending stone door, except the airport was more primitive and the journey more dangerous.

Boarding the plane and finding my seat, I sat back and breathed a sigh of relief. Then I noticed how ancient the aircraft was.

There were no magazines.

In fact, there were no pockets in the seats at all.

There were no television screens.

There was no newspaper rack in the cabin.

There were no books in my bag.

I didn't have a pen or paper, so couldn't do any work.

I suddenly realized that I was going to be stuck in a seat with no entertainment except my own thoughts for several hours. I found this utterly terrifying. (And so would you, if you had a brain like mine.)

When that flight was over, I was a shivering wreck and had to be helped off by attendants.

*
The next day, I asked commuters on the bus to teach me how to download interesting stuff onto my phone. They showed me a service at www.mobipocket.com which has loads of top bestsellers. I even found, at www.ebooks.com, downloadable versions of my own books! Good grief.

I was a next-gen hi-tech writer without even realizing it myself.

*
Now I have this huge great library of books on my phone. It's amazing. You switch it on, and the gadget goes straight to the page you were on.

It remembers your favourite type size.

It remembers your reading speed and scrolls the text at that speed.

You don’t even need to turn the pages, which was a tiresome chore I always deeply resented.

Last week I read Deep Storm, a novel so gripping that I was glued to my phone screen all the way to work.

And that's why I fell into a hole in the road.

Comments

[angela]

LOL Nuty..err..Nury..

I just joined the ranks of phone gazers about 3 weeks ago and since then I have said goodbye and good riddance to papercuts, my shoulders have been relieved of lugging heavy hard bounds on my bag, and I have even discovered a gem called audio books. It's like reading with your eyes closed - on the train or bus only else you might walk into a hole. The downside is that I am losing friends as I have not been a very good listener lately.

[TS]

A few years ago I had to spend three hours a day driving to work and back. Audio books and podcasts helped me through that period.

I recently saw a little girl in a supermarket following her shopping mother around, the little girl was carrying around one of those toy mobile phones filled with candy. At no point did she take the phone away from her ear, she had picked up from the grown ups that a mobile phone should be permanently held to your ear and in a few years her arm will be stuck there. I guess that her arm could already been stuck in that position and that her mother just put the phone there to make it look more natural.

Other than creating arm-to-your-ear-people and phone gazers, mobile phones have lead us to one of the greatest scientific discoveries so far of the 21st century: Humans have greasy ears. I don't know what use that knowledge is, I just hope that it isn't perverted into a weapon of mass advertising.

[Cookie]

i suprisingly cud never join the group of phone gazers but i did join the group of
radio listeners which is equally addictive!

[Thoughtful]

This is very revealing. The writer is incapable of being alone with his thoughts for a few hours. That suggests something severely wrong with him. I suspect many people are like this. They are so used to constantly being entertained by media, TV screens, radios, etc, that when they find themselves without entertainment for any length of time, they find it intolerable. In fact, it is important that we all find time to be alone with our thoughts from time to time.

Getting portable entertainment on a phone is not the answer. It is just making the problem worse.

[ellen]

I agree with angela and with you Nuri that carrying loads of books around inside your phone is a really attractive idea. You could just dip into a book wherever you are bus rides etc would just fly past, but I also agee with Thoughtful. Anyone who is so terrified of being alone with his or her thoughts for a few hours is definitely a bit screwed up. you have to relax more!

[Rika]

Since I started writing I am going bonkers when I am alone with my thoughts.

It's not that I don't like thinking them... I hate losing them, thinking that they could be useful in some article, or that it might be THE one idea if thought through properly could be the basis of my own business, or just the words I have been looking for to write in an email to a friend I haven't been in contact with for a while.

So either I need something to read/watch to inspire me or something where I can write on. For my last trip I got me a netbook - I have a worse handwriting than a doctor - so whenever some brain snippets are floating around like glittering blow bubbles they won't just burst and be gone - I can catch them and tie them down in the hope that one day some of them will form a whole rainbow for me.

[The doctor]

Rika I can tell that you are a real poet from your words. That part about bubbles joining together to form your rainbow is really beautiful.
There is clearly a need for writers to be continually capturing their thoughts. It's not just you and the writer of this blog but it's well known.
I can remember when I did an Eng Lit major at college reading about Keats the poet and his mission to "capture my teeming brain" before he died.
Yet at the same time, it seems unhealthy for people to be so horrified at the thought of spending a little while with no entertainment and no work and no activity.
I suspect it is a bit like hyperinsulism in the Atkins diet. The consumption of words or the emission of words becomes addictive. We end up reading or writing all the time. We read cereal boxes at breakfast. We carry stuff to read in vehicles instead of looking out the window. We feel uncomfortable when the flow stops, just in the same way that we feel uncomfortable in the Atkins diet when the constant flow of sugar/carbohydrates/caffeine stops.
It would definitely be a good thing to get over this and relax where it would be a good thing to spend an hour or two doing nothing.

[EMK]

LOL!! My head is constantly filled with music so I uasually have no problems without external stimuli...

I read or watch tv to get AWAY from the music in my head.....

[Vince A]

Nury's post gave me an idea about the next killer mobile feature -- the ability to show on the screen where the user is walking towards.

When these gadgets begin to smell like books, then I will start reading books on them.

[Santox]

Its a wonderful idea to have your favourite books downloaded into a palm-fit gadget, which can be used anywhere.

Recently a friend who was on transit at the HK Airport, phoned to ask what I liked to have, because he had time to shop. So quickly I asked if he could get a copy of your Feng Shui Detective. He couldn't find any of the book series at the airport bookshop.

Now your idea of the phonebook comes in handy.

[Rika]

To 'The doctor': I agree in cases of people who are writers 24/7. But I guess most of the people who write do so aside a day job or the nitty gritty bits of life. And to me inspiration always comes uninvited and in the most unexpected circumstances. Hence I am horrified to lose the precious moments when I actually have thoughts that are blow bubbles. However, you are right in a way that inspiration flows best when the mind is floating. So I carry my writing gear like a photographer a camera - for just in case ...