Whether the tools a hammer, a camera, a pocket knife or a smartphone,
"How we perceive our environment is shaped by the mere presence of a tool in hand. And this effect is registered even before the tool is used."
"When the smartphone enters into the dynamic, it disrupts the body’s communicative patterns. Gestures, eye contact, posture, facial expression — all of it is altered. Our body no longer means in the way it is used to being perceived. It becomes impossible to achieve an optimal grip on the embodied interaction. And because our bodies give and receive this sort of communication tacitly and often in remarkably subtle ways in the act of conversation, we may not be conscious of this dissonance. We may only register a certain feeling of being out of sync. Presence fails to emerge and conversation of the sort that Turkle champions — indeed, of the sort we all acknowledge as one of the great consolations offered to us in this world — becomes more difficult to achieve."
We begin to feel the force of Simone Weil’s judgment: “Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.”
Excerpts from http://thenewinquiry.com/essays/circle-of-presence/
Brought to my attention by Mandy Smith via Facebook.
Social media; good, bad, enriching and distracting.
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