Once upon a time, people could just sit on a bench and look around them, at the sky or the street, a space on the wall, and not be thought of as weird or crazy …
But it wasn’t that long ago.
It’s so eye opening talking to my kids about what I did growing up, back when virtually nobody had a computer or access to the internet, and all of these internet dependent devices and services didn’t exist. My kids can’t even begin to imagine what the world was like.
I'm glad we had that at least, because we know all we need to do to return to it is put down our phones and wait for the magic. My son, when he visited at Christmas, seemed to always have his phone out and he's 28. I find it irritating - it says to me that his phone is better company that hismother, which just can't be true, can it? My sister and brother in law just had a week in Hong Kong and they said everyone was utterly glue to their phones the whole time. How do people experience the real world at all? Daydreaming is a lost art, it seems. Yet you and I clearly know how much potential can be in staring into space. I can recall so many train journeys just watching the world go by - if I had three wishes, I'd seriously consider taking away our mini computer nannys for THE ENTIRE WORLD. If you want the internet, go home, get on the computer. You have an hour per day. The rest of the time, live, create, dream. Of course, I know I'm being totally idealistic here...
It would certainly be interesting to see how that played out, if you could make all the phones go away.
There’s a municipality in Japan somewhere that passed an ordinance a few months back limiting residents to two hours of screen time a day (it might have been one, come to think of it). I think the time limit was placed on personal time, so it didn’t include work or school usage.
Once upon a time, people could just sit on a bench and look around them, at the sky or the street, a space on the wall, and not be thought of as weird or crazy …
But it wasn’t that long ago.
It’s so eye opening talking to my kids about what I did growing up, back when virtually nobody had a computer or access to the internet, and all of these internet dependent devices and services didn’t exist. My kids can’t even begin to imagine what the world was like.
I'm glad we had that at least, because we know all we need to do to return to it is put down our phones and wait for the magic. My son, when he visited at Christmas, seemed to always have his phone out and he's 28. I find it irritating - it says to me that his phone is better company that hismother, which just can't be true, can it? My sister and brother in law just had a week in Hong Kong and they said everyone was utterly glue to their phones the whole time. How do people experience the real world at all? Daydreaming is a lost art, it seems. Yet you and I clearly know how much potential can be in staring into space. I can recall so many train journeys just watching the world go by - if I had three wishes, I'd seriously consider taking away our mini computer nannys for THE ENTIRE WORLD. If you want the internet, go home, get on the computer. You have an hour per day. The rest of the time, live, create, dream. Of course, I know I'm being totally idealistic here...
It would certainly be interesting to see how that played out, if you could make all the phones go away.
There’s a municipality in Japan somewhere that passed an ordinance a few months back limiting residents to two hours of screen time a day (it might have been one, come to think of it). I think the time limit was placed on personal time, so it didn’t include work or school usage.
I wonder how that’s working out.