Day 234: Drones

This is a snapshot of what my daily travels look like, on bus, train or tube. Some people also hands free while cycling and others do the same while driving, so even bikes and cars are no exception.

Every single person around me in this picture is looking at an iphone and 4/5 visible people have a handsfree in their ears. And that was just the 5 people I could get into the picture without them noticing. So repulsed am I by this trait in society that I didn't even want to take the picture because it meant introducing my own electronic device into the area.

I would make a sweeping generalisation about how the obsession with the phone is more pronounced in Sweden than it is in England but in all honesty, I don't know. I don't feel like I am always surrounded by iphones in London that is for sure, and the obsession with handsfree hasn't quite taken off there in the same way. In Stockholm people are completely oblivious to your personal space and will happily hold a loud and incessant conversation, seemingly with themselves, on their handsfree for the whole duration of a 55 minute commute.

I also feel that in London there is much more fear of openly holding a phone out on transport or in town as it may be stolen from your very hand. There is no such fear in Stockholm and sometimes I wish there was, if only to make people disconnect their hands from their phones for just a minute. They don't put them down, or away, even when they're not using them! Even with a handsfree, they don't have free hands.

I was especially irked when a train of commuters was so immersed in pointless electronic masturbation and repeated refreshing of insipid facebook updates that not a single person offered a doddery old man a seat. In the end I walked down the carriage to offer him my own, at the other side of the train. He took it gratefully. This was not a reflection of the selfishness of people refusing to give up a seat, but an example of how people switch off and become drones with no mind when they are tap-tap-tapping on their stupid little screens.

I am always heartened by the one lonely commuter with his old fashioned book.