Do you ever wish people still had to use a phone booth to make calls in public?
Seeing this picture made me wish for the return of the public phone booth.
Hearing only half of a stranger’s conversation is distracting. You’re usually drawn in, wasting brain cycles trying to figure out a conversation that you’re just hearing half of and you don’t care about. Hearing one half of a conversation causes your mind to become curious, so focusing on whatever it was you were thinking about before the cell phone conversation came into your personal space suddenly becomes harder.
Maybe the situation will be affected by a trickling down of ideas. Looking at the world of cars, automotive technology trickles down from the advances in technology from big-ticket auto racing to eventually innovate mass-produced cars for regular people. Similarly, there’s a trend in some expensive resort hotels to become “black hole resorts” allowing their guests to get away from electronic intrusions into their lives while they’re on holiday. So just like innovation trickles down to mass-produced cars from expensive race cars, maybe there’ll be a trickle down idea from rich people to the masses for an appreciation of breaks from our constant electronic intrusions.
Probably not. But you can always hope it’ll happen, because there’s more to life than increasing its speed.