Signs of the Times

You’d expect the Anablog to perhaps lambaste all things technological pell-mell, ad hominen attacks (so to speak) on circuit boards and microprocessors. While the Anablogger might engage in such shallow diatribes when feeling lazy, hopefully the bar is set a bit higher, i.e. when Luddite sympathies rise to the surface, a thoughtful reflection will also pop up. To wit:

The other night I was stopped at a light at a major intersection. I looked to my left and saw a luxury SUV with a child in the back, Even though it was night, I knew it was a child because she was bathed in the soft blue glow emanating from an iPad. Despite the gulf created by a few inches of windowpane glass, it was apparent that she was lost in her tablet-bordered world, mouth slightly agape and eyes fixated. On the median next to one of the traffic lights was a homeless man I’d seen on occasion, noticable for his crooked legs which were permanently bent at a 45 degree angle; when he walked past cars, his steps seemed torturous and painstaking. It was a bitter cold night and the pickings were slim. He was panhandling the east-west road, I was in the north-south road, and thus I had my perfect rationalization for maintaining my own little status quo inside a warm car. But the girl with the iPad never even saw him, swaddled as she was with her little toy. And, for some reason I can't quite articulate at the moment, if that's not wrong, it ain't exactly right either.

This morning, I walked outside my classroom and counted 15 students sprawled about with eyes glued to cellphones. Some were talking to one another, some were deeply intent on their devices, and I wondered what they would do when they lacked their electronic mediation, how they would react to the crippled man at the intersection.