I met up with a friend for lunch at Uncommon Grounds, near the U Albany campus. We chatted over our salads to begin with, but really we were meeting to work - preparing a power point for a project we're both involved in. My friend opened up her laptop and we got busy.
I don't really approve of using electronics in cafes. It doesn't feel right. But at least today my friend and I were sitting side-by-side and working at the same laptop. The worst thing is when people meet up and each flip open their own computer, or sit there peering at their smartphones, ignoring each other. That's a depressing sight. I don't know why it seems so much worse to me than two people sitting together in a cafe reading newspapers (which the Man and I used to do regularly over Sunday brunch back in our kid-free, courting days). Maybe it's that a newspaper only puts its reader at a paper-thin remove from the here-and-now, whereas electronic gadgets (being so interactive) draw the user further in and much further away from the real live person they could be talking to.
I have to admit, many's the time in our house when each of us is hooked into a gadget of some kind, so that even though we're all sharing the same physical space we're not really together at all. Those are not the times we'll look back at fondly and remember. Whereas the last two evenings, when we've played raucously silly family games of Apples to Apples, we shall all remember with a smile.
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