A selfie, like any photograph, interrupts
experience to mark the moment. In this, it
shares something with all the other ways
we break up our day, when we text during
class, in meetings, at the theatre, at
dinners with friends. And yes, at funerals,
but also more regularly at church and
synagogue services. We text when we are
in bed with our partners and spouses. We
watch our political representatives text
during sessions.
Technology doesn’t just do things for us.
It does things to us, changing not just
what we do but who we are. The selfie makes
us accustomed to putting ourselves and
those around us “on pause” in order to
document our lives. It is an extension of
how we have learned to put our conversations
“on pause”. When you get accustomed to a
life of stops and starts, you get less
accustomed to reflecting on where you are
and what you are thinking.
We don’t experience interruptions as
disruptions anymore. But they make it hard
to settle into serious conversations with
ourselves and with other people because
emotionally, we keep ourselves available
to be taken away from everything.
These days, when people are alone, or
feel a moment of boredom, they reach for a
device. In a movie theatre, at a stop sign,
at the checkout line at a supermarket and,
yes, at a memorial service, reaching for
a device becomes so natural that we start
to forget that there is a reason, a good
reason, to sit still with our thoughts.
A 14-year-old boy said to me: “Don’t people
know that sometimes you can just look out
the window of a car and see the world go
by and it is wonderful. You can think.
People don’t know that.”
Adapted from “The Documented Life” by Sherry Turkle which originally appeared in The New York Times on December 16, 2013.
Some random “paparatsi” (spl?) pics I took of people I took on their phones in the park… Life on Pause?
