Thoughtful essay by Paul Goldberger (the New Yorker’s architecture critic) in Metropolis magazine about how cellphones are uprooting and altering how we connect to the world around us:
But the cell phone has changed our sense of place more than faxes and computers and e-mail because of its ability to intrude into every moment in every possible place. When you walk along the street and talk on a cell phone, you are not on the street sharing the communal experience of urban life. You are in some other place—someplace at the other end of your phone conversation. You are there, but you are not there. It reminds me of the title of Lillian Ross’s memoir of her life with William Shawn, Here But Not Here. Now that is increasingly true of almost every person on almost every street in almost every city. You are either on the phone or carrying one, and the moment it rings you will be transported out of real space into a virtual realm.
This is all true, as people talking on the phone aren’t talking to each other, but this is really a romanticized notion of public space that was dying out long before the rise of the cellphone. Goldberger also unfairly discounts how this virtual space he refers to can be meaningful and powerful in its own right. Believe it or not, sometimes walking down the street while talking to another person can actually augment, rather than diminish, your own experience of a place.
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