I have now spent hours pondering the Apple Store, building my ultimate iPad. This may not be the most productive use of my time but I'd like to think that Sherry Turkle would be proud of me. Her latest book, 'Alone Together', seems without optimism. We are, apparently, if we don't learn some cyber-manners, doomed to lose the capacity for solitude, and instead we'll just be engaged in lonely conversations with hundreds of strangers. The best line from her recent presentation in London summed it up in this way: we have moved from a state of saying to ourselves 'I have a feeling, I need to make a call', to 'I want to have a feeling, I need to send a text'.
Granted, young Mark Zuckerberg's notions of the death of privacy are ominous, but personally I have cultivated nothing but solitude in the building of my ultimate iPad. It has been hours of uninterrupted, solo, decision making, on colour, memory required, spec, and 'should I wait for iPad3 or go for a cheaper, so-last-year, model'. I know that on Sundays, my iPad, iPhone, laptop and desktop will be turned off (except if I need to read knitting pattern pdfs or am skyping various 'homes', neither of which is particularly detrimental to my spiritual well-being). I know where the 'silent' button is and how to use it. And no technology is ever, EVER, placed on a table during meal times.
The debate over the impact of technology reminds me of doing field work in India in the 1990s when satellite television was rampaging across the cultural landscape, dragging moral panic and fundamentalism behind it. Interviewing three generations of men in one family, the father expressed concern about the impact of channels like MTV on his teenage son, feeling it would 'degrade his morals'. The grandfather told a story of how, at the turn of the 20th century, in a Punjabi village, his parents, respectable village elders, refused to let him go to a travelling theatre's performance of the Ramayana (a classic Hindu mythological story) because they feared it would degrade his morals. Same rhetoric, different medium. The grandfather grew up to be a nice, solid middleclass, gentleman; his son (the father) grew up to be a nice, solid, middleclass gentleman; and I have no doubt his son has grown up to be a nice, solid, middleclass man, with a smart phone. So cheer up Sherry. Give us a bit of time to learn the etiquette and I think we'll be okay.
