Metro Ride Read: The World is Flat

I've been engrossing myself on my daily Metro rides in Thomas Friedman's The World is Flat (Version 3.0). He describes all of the confluences in technology and communication and exchange that are flattening business and society, giving the individual access to information and the ability to empower his/herself like never before. (He does recognize that there are plenty of people who still live in unflat circumstances, however.)

Anyway, around page 516, he articulates some of the very tensions that concern me as someone who bridges the analog and digital ages.

He recounts when he arrived to an airport in Paris and was met by his driver. His driver was talking on his bluetooth, watching a film on a monitor in his dashboard, and driving. Friedman was listening to his iPod, typing an article on his laptop, and riding in the back of the cab.

....Technology can make the far feel very near. But it can also make the near feel very far.
For all I know, the driver was talking to his parents somewhere in Africa. How wonderful! But that meant that the two of us wouldn't talk at all. And we were sitting two feet away from each other. When I shared this story with Linda Stone, the technologist who labeled the disease of the Internet age "continuous partial attention"---two people do six things, devoting only partial attention to each one---..."We're so accessible, we're inaccessible. We can't find the off switch on our devices or on ourselves.... we are everywhere---except where we actually are physically."

Friedman points to a number of social downsides to this "continuous partial attention."

That we have entered an "Age of Interruption" where all we ever do is interrupt each other through our I/Ms, e-mails and cell phone calls, or that our concentration is broken when someone else's cell phone rings. That connectivity equals productivity, but does it result in creativity. Will civilization decline because of attention deficit disorder?

That we crave the completely unplugged experience. Perhaps one day there will be hotels that promise rooms WITHOUT Internet service.

That we may not be better off having millions of unedited, unfiltered, uncensored bloggers creating and uploading information that isn't fact-checked.

That the language is becoming corrupt. That people have too little time to spend writing properly. That no one ever wrote a great book with his thumbs. That I/M short hand is now creeping into the essays of high school and college students.