Progress?

I read a while ago that when telephones were first introduced in Great Britain, there was considerable resistance from members of the aristocratic segment of society to have them installed in their homes. They were used to a very formal and fairly rigid process for their social interactions; if one wanted to visit an acquaintance they first sent around a card requesting an audience. If it was accepted (and only then) did they actually go visit their friend. It was considered so impolite to just “drop by” that it was simply not done, except maybe in extreme emergencies (“Your country house is on fire!”) Installing telephones in people’s homes however allowed all that to change; rather than sending a card someone could just pick up the phone and call. To the gentry, this was considered a direct intrusion to their homes and many of them refused to tolerate it. This seems quaint and vaguely pretentious to us today, but back then it was very real.

Fast forward to today.

I was sitting in a restaurant a few days ago, and saw all four people at a table near me (they weren’t kids, but young adults) furiously poking away at their respective phones (it was only a little gratifying to note that most of them were iPhones!). I suppose they could be having a contest to see who would be the first to get the election results from Namibia by doing a quick web search, but I’m guessing they were simply engaged in their own virtual conversations and ignoring each other. Anyhow it struck me how insulting it was to the other people at their table, that whomever they were texting was more important at that moment than whatever conversation they may have been having as a group. But then I thought that I was applying my own biases to this; it obviously wasn’t insulting to the others, as all of them were texting. They were all pretty much oblivious to their surroundings (and one another). And speaking of being oblivious to one’s surroundings, of course we’ve all laughed at the video of the woman in the mall, walking into the fountain while texting. Just in case you’re the only person in the world who hasn’t seen that yet on YouTube, here’s a link for your viewing pleasure.

Anyhow, I got thinking about how our social conventions change with technology. For one thing, everything seems to go faster. I know I’ve been guilty of emailing a question to a colleague, and been annoyed when I don’t get a response within a minute or two. “After all, I’m sitting here at my keyboard, I figure they must be too, so why is it taking so long?” As I write this I know that seems silly, but I suspect we’ve all been there. When there was some business decision to be made in the past, people would usually give themselves several days to process everything. Meet, talk over what needs to be done, and arrive at a general agreement. Write up the agreement to be sent, knowing that it would take a day or two to write it up, a couple of more days to arrive by mail, and then a couple more days before they would expect to get it back. So you had a week or so to let it bang around in your head, giving you time to catch mistakes you may have made and amend the agreement. Today, it’s “I’ll email this to you when we hang up, sign it and have it back to me in 15 minutes.” I’m not commenting here whether that’s good or bad, just that it’s become a fact of life.

And for another, no one views a phone call as a violation of social convention any more (it’s irritating when telemarketers call at dinnertime, but that’s a different issue); my point is that social conventions have changed and the expectation of receiving a card in the mail (or delivered by hand from one servant to another, then on to you) prior to a personal visit now seems ridiculous. So maybe seeing a group of four, each ignoring the people in front of them in favor of a virtual conversation via texting, is just the ripple of a social convention being changed.

I’m still going to stop when I catch myself because I think it’s rude, but then maybe I’m old school. Or maybe just old.