Distraction Culture: Never alone?

November 2005

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Here we are - in a world where digital has created a parallel sense of space where we, and everything else, are always on. It’s very distracting. TV, the internet and now mobile phones bring the digital world into our own space and fill it. Emptiness is hard to achieve.

Marshall McLuhan understood the potential of the phone in “Understanding Media” .

“In the 1920’s a popular song was “All Alone by the Telephone, All Alone Feeling Blue”. Why should the phone create an intense feeling of loneliness? Why should we feel compelled to answer a ringing public phone when we know the call cannot concern us? Why does a phone ringing on the stage create instant tension? Why is that tension so very much less for an unanswered phone in a movie scene? The answer to all of these questions is that the phone is a participant form that demands a partner…it simply will not act as a background instrument like a radio.”

The phone is very insistent – we cannot leave it alone. This is partly explained by McLuhan’s theory that the phone demands a partner and partly because we all wish to feel wanted. In fact it is entertaining, involving and two way. Calls, text messages and e-mail satisfy that need.