Personal essays
Progressive isolation
The conversation
I’ll get to the goggles, but there was a moment early in yesterday’s keynote from Apple at their developer conference when someone was out walking listening to his headphones.
A second person jogged up to him and started talking to him and his music lowered and he could hear the other person perfectly.
The two men spoke for a bit but there was clearly a power imbalance. The guy wearing the headphones didn’t pause what he was listening to and he didn’t take them out of his ears.
He also didn’t stop walking. The other man had to jog backwards so that they remained face to face during their conversation.
I know the takeaway was supposed to be, “isn’t it cool. The headphones are smart enough to automatically adjust to allow for the conversation.”
I just thought the headphone wearing guy was impolite. Stop walking and take one of your headphones out to show some courtesy.
When I mentioned that to a friend at dinner they just shook their head and told me that that sentiment was kind but old-fashioned.
Together but not
The couple at the next table sat across from each other smiling and having a good time.
They hardly spoke.
Each had their phone out and were scrolling through one app after another.
Every once in a while one would laugh and the other would ask, “what?”
The amused person would then forward whatever had made them laugh to the other person. Their phone would buzz, they’d look at the sent item, nod, and laugh.
I’m sure if you asked either of them what they did the night before they would say they went out with a friend for dinner and had a great time.
They were across from a friend for dinner. I’m not sure they were with a friend.
I’ve been in large groups where everyone is on their phone at some point during the night.
I’ll admit that if my watch or phone buzzes I’ll glance down to see if it’s an emergency. If not, it can wait.
Apple showed a new feature in iOS 17 where when your phone rings and someone else leaves a message you can see the text of their message as they leave it.
It’s like the early days of answering machines. Your phone would ring - but in the old days the phone was way over there on the other side of the room. You might not feel like getting up from the couch and you’d let the answering machine pick up.
If the volume on the machine was turned up you could hear the message the other person was leaving and if it sounded really important you could usually get to the phone before they were done leaving a message.
There were also people who used it to screen their calls and only speak to some people. I’m sure this new feature on the iPhone will be used that way as well, but it will be nice to be able to pick up if it’s an emergency and we happen to notice the message being left.
There’s something about knowing we aren’t missing critical calls that allows us to stay present when we can.
Immersion
I came out to California for Apple’s conference but didn’t have a ticket to the actual event. I’ve filled my days with meetings, coffee, and dinners with people.
But, again, I didn’t have a ticket to the actual event.
I love technology.
I set up a Zoom call and a group of us watched the keynote and later the state of the union together on Zoom. It wasn’t like being in the same room - that would have been way more fun - but it also was better than watching the event alone. We were in four different time zones with eight hours separating the most distant ones and yet we watched the keynote together and shared our observations. It was a diverse enough group that different people were excited about different announcements and that made it a better experience for me.
The goggles that Apple showed were pretty amazing. I could use them to combine the experiences of watching the keynote while having my friends “sit” in the room with me. I don’t know how I would balance the audio - but my point is that there will be times when the goggles will bring distant people together.
My worry is that it will keep people who are physically near us far away.
We’ll disappear into our own worlds and not want to take the goggles off to look someone in the eye while we have a real conversation.
There’s a nice feature where you can see someone’s eyes in the goggles and tell if their looking at you or not. You can see if they are watching something on the screen and are otherwise occupied.
All of this looks cool and well thought out, but I don’t want another device that stands between us and the world around us.
I want people to stop walking and take the device off.
But that’s because I’m kind of old-fashioned.
Essay from Dim Sum Thinking Newsletter 167. Read the rest of the Newsletter or subscribe