The Quiet Commute

My wife and I took the Red Line "L" train to go see a Chicago White Sox game this past weekend.  It took us almost an hour to get there, so we definitely had time to "people watch".  Both of us noticed two college athletes (they were wearing T-shirts with their college name and I could read their nametags on their backpacks) who were obviously together and going someplace fun.  Both individuals were wearing headphones, and both of them spent the entire duration of their ride staring intently at their smart phones.  I don't think they said one word to each other.

I've been using public transportation a lot lately for my work commute.  Just like our experience above, I've often noticed that most people stare down at their smart phones and rarely converse with their fellow commuters.  In full disclosure, I don't engage in conversation with my fellow commuters either.  I usually bring a book to read, and I often sit alone on the upper train level, because it is quiet and the single seats allow me to remain alone.

Now, based on a few of my more recent posts blaming everything that is wrong in our world on social media ("Liberation"), smart phones ("Are smart phones making us dumb?" ), or the Internet ("Why the past 10 years of American life have been uniquely stupid..."), you're probably thinking this is going to be another anti-technology rant!  Not so!  I am going to let you come to your own conclusions this time.  I just want to point out that this issue of self-imposed isolation isn't so new.

As it turns out, back in 1946, the American filmmaker and photographer Stanley Kubrick (Kubrick directed or produced such hits as Spartacus, Lolita, Dr. Strangelove, 2001: A Space Odyssey, A Clockwork Orange, The Shining, and Full Metal Jacket) was a staff photographer for Look magazine and set out to photograph New York City's subway commuters.  His photographs were later published in a pictorial series entitled "Life and Love on the New York City Subway".  As you can see in the photo below, times haven't really changed much in the last 79 years.  Instead of reading a magazine or newspaper, commuters now read their iPads and smart phones, listen to music, or work on their laptop computers.

I'm not going to say whether it's right or wrong that people spend most of their time looking at their smart phones instead of interacting.  I will let you be the judge of that, and I do believe that I've been very clear on my opinion in previous posts.  However, to say that our tendency to ignore what is going on around us is a new phenomenon or is even a generational difference is completely false.  If you wish to argue that smartphones have made these tendencies worse, then I completely agree!  The so-called "quiet commute" is not new, but it's definitely worse.