“In making certain things easier for people, technology has actually demotivated people from using their brains. We have all these devices that keep us connected, and yet we're more disconnected than ever before. Why is that?”- Emilio Estevez
It is a scene all too familiar with the masses of restaurant
staff throughout the country nowadays, or at least one very common in
metropolitan areas. It can be a group of young teenagers, an older couple
enjoying a relaxing meal, or a family with small children. But no matter the
age demographic, generation gap or social function at hand (drinks with
friends, family meal, etc)., many of these food-seekers have one thing in
common: they can’t step away from their technology. As in, they spend their
whole meal checking their phones, playing with their tablets, or (in the case
of the families with little kids) watching movies. Yes, I personally see this
countless times every single shift I work at a particular family-friendly,
“premium casual” restaurant in the middle of Los Angeles: parents who set up their tablet
or phone in front of their kid and have them watch a movie or television or
play a game instead of interacting with the family unit.
I was immediately reminded of this specific spectacle in
Chapter V: “The Social-Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere” in
Jürgen Habermas’s The Structural
Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois
Society. For such a lengthy title, older publication date (1962) and
complex examination of the historical and social ramifications of the “public
sphere”, Habermas’s analyses are nevertheless thoroughly applicable to contemporary
outlooks on societal dynamics. By referencing H. Schelsky’s observation that
the power of the family on an individual’s social development and connection to
the public sphere lost much of its influence from “the elimination… of all
aspects not directly relevant to task performance,” Habermas saw that
“individual family members are now socialized by extrafamilial authorities, by
society directly” (156). Habermas does not seem to address this directly, but
it is more than likely he was primarily focused on the socialization of upper
to middle class, white males, since throughout much of history, the disenfranchisement
of women and minorities coupled with the poor education levels of the lower
class made it so that those operating in the public sphere constituted only a
small part within the larger community. As such, Habermas noted that with the
rise of the public sphere and the middle-class’s participation within in, more
and more individuals (read: educated white men) began to construct their
identities as reflections of society or their intellectual peers and sought
outlets of social interaction separate from their families by engaging in
discussions in public spaces. The result was that “privatized individuals…
[formed] a public [that] reflected critically and in public on what they had
read, thus contributing to the process of enlightenment (Habermas 51). However,
with the shift towards capitalism and
the “disengagement from the functional complex of social labor in general,”
Habermas saw that the family “increasingly lost also the functions of
upbringing and education, protection, care and guidance” (Habermas 154-55).
I can recognize the loss in family “functions” each time I
see a child sitting at a table with his or her parents staring at a cell phone
or tablet screen, interacting more with the technology than with their family
unit. To this effect, the child is “socialized” by technology, making their
interactions and understanding of how this particular technology can be
incorporated into their lives paramount to their relationship with their
parents or social group. It is that loss of connection, of basic interaction
between members of a family that have me, at the rather young age of
twenty-five, feel nostalgic for the time before technology was so prevalent.
That is not to say that I myself do not rely on technology – I am, after all,
relying a computer, an internet connection and an internal spell-checker to do
a great deal of the work for this blog posting. Moreover, I will acknowledge
here that for some parents, this is probably the best way to keep their kid
focused on something so they do not end up running around the restaurant
screaming their heads off – and for the children who do end up doing just that, I always wonder if giving them a
computer screen would calm them down. However, it does not seem that we, as a
society, are making a cautious enough consideration to how this will – note how I do not say might – impact the upcoming generations’
abilities to perform, interact and participate in what Habermas deems the
“rational-critical debate” central to the public sphere.
On the other hand, Habermas does offer up a sort of support
to the idea that outside influences – namely, technology – can bring people
together in the realm of the public. He quotes William H. Whyte who says that “doing things with other people… even
watching television together… helps make one more of a real person” (158). I
would have to disagree slightly with Whyte in this aspect, as I do not see
physical or communal activities such as playing sports or watching television
the same as our culture’s dependence on individualized, hand-held devices. I do
not think checking my email, responding to text messages or surfing the web on
my phone results in the same sort of group dynamic that would come from, say,
watching a movie with my friends. Even in the darkened, quiet theatre, there is
a sense of the private (i.e. me solely focused on the screen in front of me),
but then afterwards, there always seems to be the social factor: debating the
movie, talking about particular scenes, discussing our interpretations, etc. I
rarely find myself involving other people in the various functions of my phone
(email, texts, etc.), and even then, I do not think showing someone a photo on
my phone or a text from someone else elicits the same “rational-critical”
debate that might follow a movie viewing.
In the end, I must admit that I do have reservations about
how the generations raised entirely in the “technologic” or “networked” age
will operated in regards to social dynamics, and how they will connect with (or
disconnect from) the public sphere, that is, if there is still anything resembling Habermas’s idea at all. My fear is
that technology is pushing individual users more readily and with faster and
faster connectivity into the realm of the private, one that seems to
incorporate the rhetoric of the
public sphere (i.e. phones and devices that allow you to “connect” instantly
with others; instantaneous search results; dynamic social networking) without
any of the positive results. Indeed, sometimes it seems to me that even with
our multiple devices that promise connections and encourage conversation, we
are actually moving towards a diminished sense of a “rational-critical debate”,
as it may come one day when the majority of those who would participate readily
in the public sphere do not know or understand how to make personal,
face-to-face connections with those around them.
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| Photo: PCWorld.com |
One last thing to think about: Eva, a Los Angeles restaurant (sadly, not the one I work at), will apparently give diners a 5% discount if they give up their
phones and devices before being seated. According to owner Mark Gold, about
half of diners have done so, and the goal in doing this is to
“create that environment of home, and we want people to connect again. It’s about two people sitting together and just connecting, without the distraction of a phone, and we’re trying to create an ambiance where you come in and really enjoy the experience and the food and the company.” (Hsu 1)
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Habermas, Jürgen. The
Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of
Bourgeois Society. Cambridge:
The MIT Press, 1991. Print.
Hsu, Tiffany. “L.A.
restaurant pays customers to put away their phones.” The Los Angeles
Times. latimes.com. 15 August 2012. Web. 23 September 2012.
