Gadgets

This "rant" may be seen as an extension of my previous one: from unnecessary and unnecessarily expensive computerized keys to all sorts of other unnecessary gadgets.

On my recent trip, whether waiting in terminals for flights or flying through the air, I was always surrounded by people immersed in their own electronic world. They were on their cell phones, or thumbing their BlackBerrys (BlackBerries?), or listening with glazed eyes to whatever was playing on their ipods. There were also plenty of people pecking away at their laptops.

Very few people reading books (I was – the most recent volume in the Forsyte Saga, see Note of January 18), or magazines or, God forbid, newspapers. How many of you out there remember when stewardesses (this was back in the day when they were called stewardesses, rather than flight attendants) would pass down the aisle of the plane with an armload of magazines and newspapers for people to read? Ha!

I felt a real dismay at all these people clicking and pecking and holding conversations with people they'd just left or would see in 10 minutes, and I've been trying to decide why. Because these activities made them seem oblivious to what was happening around them? But when I'm immersed in reading I can also be pretty oblivious. In fact, that's why I tend to put my book away as the time draws nearer for boarding – I don't want to miss hearing my "seating section" called. I mean, God forbid that I shouldn't get on the plane the minute I'm able to – someone might get my seat!

No, I think it has more to do with a feeling that all those people are dependent on these not-inexpensive gadgets (the cheapest ipod I see on Amazon.com is $150, discounted to $134; the cheapest BlackBerry seems to be $170 with a 2-year contract required) to keep them-selves entertained, engaged. Without them they'd be reduced to people-watching, napping, maybe talking to the people next to them, or the aforementioned reading. We really have become a gadget-dependent society.

Of course, it could be claimed that a book is just a simpler, less expensive "gadget." A simpler form of technology – for I suppose it is the technological aspect of the whole thing that I find most objec-tionable. We haven't just become a gadget-dependent society, but a society obsessed with technology, with the newest and latest forms of same. And it all seems just so damned unnecessary. Like the stupid computerized keys.

I will say this: sitting next to someone nodding his head to the music pouring into his ear – but his ear alone – from his ipod is certainly preferable to sitting even on the other side of the waiting area from someone listening to a boom box turned too loud. Have boom boxes gone the way of the dinosaur? What an excellent development if they have...