Tell me if you’ve seen this before.
You’re walking down the street and you see someone coming in the opposite direction towards you. Being the respectful and courteous citizen you are, you move over slightly on the sidewalk so the two of you can pass.
Except, this person doesn’t notice you. In fact, they’re completely unaware of their surroundings. As human beings we rely on our sense of sight and sense of sound in order to assess and understand our environment. How then, with their ear pods in listening to some podcast, and their eyes staring straight down, can this person possibly hope to make sense of what is going on around them! They’re incapacitated! Effectively, a walking zombie.
Does it make me a revolutionary to declare that its dangerous to cross a busy street with cars driving past and turning in different directions while looking down at your phone texting your AI girlfriend? How many seconds until the lights change? Are there any cars waiting for you to cross so that they can turn? Do you trust these drivers with your life? Cars, which are comically equipped with their own interfaces that are just just as distracting as cell phones, pose a serious danger to pedestrians.
Imagine that… Neither the driver in the car nor the pedestrian on the street have any clue what’s going on around them! In addition to self driving cars, we will need automated walking machines so that people can focus less on walking and more on their phones and other things that really matter. Tech bros, are you listening?
What I’d like to draw your attention to is that this problem is far more pervasive than awareness of surroundings. Forget the opiate crisis, we should we worrying about the CELL PHONE CRISIS…. Cell phones. The latest and greatest culturally accepted and monetized narcotic.
If people can’t bear the solitude of their own minds during a 30 minute commute to work, or a 10 minute stroll to the grocery store, then what does that say about other aspects of our lives? Truly, these are chaotic times. The explosive growth of civilization following the industrial revolution, and the birth of the internet have ushered in a panoply of new existential crisis that are bearing their fruits today. Divisive politics, disruptive technologies, environmental catastrophes… you can hardly blame people for wanting to shut out the world.
For those of you out there that seek a higher purpose, I encourage you to lead by example and put down your cellphone when you’re walking on the street.
A sign in a public park in Japan. You have to wonder how many bonked heads it took before the park board decided to PUT UP A FREAKING SIGN.
i am not a phone zombie 
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