Staring into the Future?

A young couple is crossing at State and East Main streets in Meriden. He is pushing one of those double-strollers with two children. She is walking a few steps behind, starting at her phone. Yours truly is stopped at the light. At the same time a man is walking in the crosswalk at East Main and Per-kins Square, directly behind the one the couple is in. He is staring at his phone so intently he almost runs into the railroad gate at the downtown crossing.

Less than a hour later, I am in a meeting with a half dozen people. Two are starting at their phones intermittently, checking for updates via e-mail. It is not the first time people have drifted during one of my meetings. At least these two are doing other work and not falling asleep or staring out the window as people often did in the days before they had phones to stare at.

The night before, like millions of others, my attention was focused on the championship series be-tween the Celtics and Lakers. NBA star Dwyane Wade was in the front row with his son, who ap-peared to be around 5, give or take a year or two. The third and fourth quarters were an old-style NBA war. Players were pushing and shoving and hitting the deck. The home crowd was loudly supporting the Celtics. When the camera showed Wade and his son, the child was staring at some kind of hand-held device I assume was a game player.
No surprise. My sons, 15 and 17, spend more time looking at their phones than listening to their fa-ther. Before they were old enough for phones, they spent a lot of time looking at hand-held video-game devices.

This makes me wonder about the future of human interaction. Sales of what are referred to as un-tethered devices such as iPads are expected to approach cell phone levels in the next decade. When most people have the equivalent of a desktop computer in their palms, will they ever pay attention to someone doing something as antiquated as talking?

All this makes me feel a little envious and scared because when I cross the road I prefer to look around at the people and buildings that make up the downtown landscape. In meetings, I prefer to listen what is being said. At sports events, I like to watch the action. I’d even prefer my moody, demanding, unforgiving teen-age sons to staring at some screen that I need my reading glasses to make out.

So how do I and others like me survive in a world that values texting over talking?