The Decline of the West

try having a conversation with a 23 year old (and in my field, theater in nyc, i keep working with them all the time)... they can't talk for more than a few minutes without checking their phone, if they haven't already checked it and txtd several times while I just there and wait for them to finish. That generation is rapidly changing how they communicate with people (i dont want to be a scold and say for the worse) and I'm being a bit left behind. Prolonged direct eye contact becomes more and more infrequent - not out of nervousness, i don't think, but out of a desire to constantly txt other people while talking to someone in person.

As a 20-something metrosexual new yorker, I can say that I have no idea what a "Text Shrug" is.

This is about as reliable as one of Tommy Friedman's cab drivers. Not quite sure why the New Yorker thinks George Packer is worthy of publication, to be honest.

George Packer is a tool and if I could comment without registration I would tell him so.

I have always owned a cell for one of two reasons: 1) order pizza-to-go on the way home from a long road trip 2) call for help if the the car breaks down I can't decide which of the two is more of an emergency.

Look, one he isn't talking about 20-somethings. If they can't carry a conversation, they already couldn't. But many of the younger aren't taught how to deal with business situations. Two, he's right, but it's mostly older people who haven't learned to deal with technology, escaping from the shell of interacting with people on a business level to one dealing with computers or third parties for business and only face to face with friends. It's a different layer of communications. And I hate the cell phones, too, people yak on them constantly, while driving, I see as many as last year, driving aimlessly and only reacting to things around them on a base level; the cel phone ban seems to have only reduced the talkers for a short while. They're all back. And the people who take the cel phones outside - yes, you just walked out of your private home, so that everyone on the block can hear your private conversation. Augh! On the other hand, I had this appliance guy with two cel phones repair my washer - taking official calls on one line, personal on the other, handing off the personal ones while a customer was around... It was a real pleasure to see someone so able to use technology that they'd put it into their work seamlessly, making sure he had jobs lined up all the time. No one else would even call me back - even though he wasn't familiar with the type of washer I had. And he fixed it right. So I think there's two things going on - people who blend into technology seamlessly, so they don't notice that they're actually doing far more things than their predecessors, and those who don't notice that technology is enabling them to ignore the world around them, a insular shell.

As a firefighter/EMT with 20 years experience working in Big California City, I have to agree to some extent with the roofer. Over my career I think I have seen a decline in the ability of regular people to interact directly, especially in emergency situations. Many more people today seem disinclined to make eye contact or speak in direct terms, than was the case at the start of my career. I would disagree about the special difficulty of more educated "clients." Academic or professionally disciplined clients are somewhat more likely, in my experience, to keep their heads about them and give useful information in a crisis than the working or indigent might be. That was true back when cell phones were rare $1000 bricks, and remains so today. But to expand on the comment, I'd say that as people have come to be more "connected," and understood that 911 or the AAA is just a cell phone call away, they have become less likely to resolve their own emergencies. Even as first aid and CPR training and etc becomes more commonplace in schools, reliance on public service seems to grow. From the standpoint of job security I'm not complaining, but as a taxpayer...

Kevin: This is part of the flip side of the Flynn Effect of rising raw IQ scores. We are getting better at dealing with the kind of things that standardized tests measure, while not improving or possibly getting worse at dealing with physical reality and other people face to face. For the research, see: http://www.vdare.com/sailer/070903_flynn.htm

...a nuclear missile launch warning comes in to the White House. The POTUS picks up his handy Blackberry and begins texting the Russian Premier. Scares the crap out of me! We're breeding a generation who can't speak to each other. What's that going to do to people skills? Foreign relations? Love at first sight? The human brain has a finite information bandwidth. What happens to us when the flow of critical information exceeds that capacity?

Anon @ 10:46 is spot-on: While 20-somethings still make plans to meet at a certain place and certain time, the understanding is usually that this is negotiable, as work, other social plans, other phone calls, etc. may run late. Speaking of running late, I (a technologically old-fashioned 27-year-old who does not text or tweet and doesn't mind leaving or listening to voice mail) find that when a party invitation says 9, it really means 9:30 to 10:00, or, at least, that's when everyone shows up. When I had several people over for dinner for 6:45, the earliest person came at 7, and the rest trickled in in the next fifteen minutes, some texting that they were a little late, others not. Is this a generational thing? I remember when my parents had people over or took me to a social event, 6:45 meant 6:45--people were even (gasp!) early now and then.

I guess I have little to add except to say I totally agree with the roofer and most of the comments above. Not to sound like the cranky old man yelling at kids on his lawn, but people under 30 (most especially including my teenage sons) cannot focus on the human in front of them ever, they are so itchy to deal with their blackberries and text messages on cell phones. What is lost is not the art of communication but the art of focused, sustained communication.

Roofing is expensive, and people have a right to answers to their questions, even those that may seem trivial to the pros. Maybe this guy needs to convey a more personal and patient attitude himself. There is nothing worse than trying to deal with a trades person who treats you like a number, and dances around your concerns. Having said all that, however, I do think some people are being changed by this technology.