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Disconnect, cell by cell
Paul Brownfield for the LA Times via azcentral reports with humour and uncanny insight on how acceptable cellphone use has become in public spaces; "how many people talk and order, talk and shop, talk and drive". "In order to serve you properly, we cannot take your order while on a cell phone," the sign on the deli counter at Manhattan Bagel in Santa Monica says. This particular Manhattan Bagel franchise is fed up with trying to serve customers who are having a nothing conversation on the phone. It's not exactly a backlash, but there are a growing number of places around Los Angeles -- from sushi bars in the San Fernando Valley to Zipper, the modernist general store on fashionable 3rd Street in West Hollywood -- trying to get you off the phone". Brownfield wonders if "this some kind of breakdown in the public arena or just plain rudeness? Maybe it's this: The more we blur the lines between public and private, work and play, serious and casual, the more everything becomes fair game". "The unbearable loneliness of being with yourself, a lot of people can't stand that," Katz said, on the subject of Americans and their cellphones. "Before, they'd have to nervously tap their foot, now they can harness that nervous energy into bothering their friends. Which would explain why so many of the cellphone conversations we overhear are nonessential or trivial. In reality, we're really not talking about that much. It is, to be sure, a paradox: We use the cellphone to distance ourselves from the physical world, but then when we make contact often the first thing we do is identify where we are". |
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