It’s probably cliché at this point, but I’m tired of being together not feeling like being really together anymore. Conversations are halted for rapid fact-checking, note-taking, calendar-reviewing. Our gaze breaking when notifications chime or when smartwatches vibrate.
Human attention has become so fragmented that I doubt most people can engage in meaningful exchanges anymore. My therapist is the only person I know around me who is able to sustain active listening beyond half an hour—and I pay her. In the 21st century psychologists supply what people lack at home, intimacy for hire.
This probably accounts for the calming effect older films have on me. Dialogue and routine seem… different, even though actors are still following a script. Watching a character come home from work and simply exist —reflecting, reading, writing— feels incredibly soothing.
Maybe smartphones are not the core problem though. What if wearable devices provided continuous real-time access to knowledge and reasoning, similar to opening Claude or ChatGPT on our phones now? The problem is probably in the capacity itself. We’re not getting distracted from something, we are avoiding something, and each new capability allows us to delay that something a little longer.
If the capacity is the problem, the fix is to want less of it. I do want less of it. I also use all of it, every day, and I notice that the wanting and the using don't seem to interfere with each other.