Does your phone, the TV and advertising demand your attention everywhere you look? All this stimulation is triggering a social crisis, says writer Matthew Crawford. He talks to Ed Cumming about how to reconnect with reality
Before I met Matthew Crawford I loved air travel. I loved how everything was laid out for you, how the delineated stages of the airport gave way painlessly to those of the plane: check-in, security, boarding, take-off, drinkmealsleep, land. The closest you came to a choice was chicken or fish. (Part of me preferred it when there was just one movie that everyone was obliged to watch simultaneously, like the state broadcast of some eccentric despot.) Your phone didn’t work. You couldn’t refresh your feeds. The plane was a haven of monotony, and not having to think made those liminal hours, ironically, a great time to think.
But on the flight to Washington I noticed that the forces of distraction are winning the war in the air just as they are on the ground. There was a large selection of films, before which adverts were shown. Marketing slogans were written on the teacups: “Twinings – get you back to you”. Someone in front of me was playing Candy Crush, a game to which I had a short but debilitating addiction in 2013. Not only are you now allowed to use your electronic devices in the air, you can charge them, too. When the internet is available on international flights, as it is on some local routes, the game will truly be up.
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from Advertising | The Guardian http://www.theguardian.com/media/2015/apr/12/matthew-crawford-distraction-is-a-kind-of-obesity-of-the-mind-the-world-beyond-your-head
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