Present Company Excluded

Devi Asmarani ,  The Jakarta Post - WEEKENDER   |  Tue, 05/19/2009 7:31 PM  |  Living & Learning

Have you ever dined out with a group of friends or relatives, only to find an absence of connection between you and the people across the table?

Instead of engaging in a conversation with you or each other, they are occupied with their phones, typing away and sometimes chuckling to themselves. They look up only when someone suggests taking a group picture, which always grabs everyone’s attention.

After the click-click from various phones, their attention returns to their gadgets and uploading the new pictures to their favorite networking sites.

Never experienced this? Well, either you hang with the right crowd or you are a little out of touch with what is happening on the ground.

For this is a real-life phenomenon happening across this city, at least among the many users of the so-called Smartphone. (Oh, and by the way, a Smartphone is a mobile phone with advanced capabilities that functions almost like a PC.)

From Blackberry and iPhones to the latest range of Nokia communicators or Samsung, the choices are limitless now to keep yourself connected at all times and (mostly) anywhere.

Sure, they connect us to people we otherwise see once a year, or those distant faces from college graduation ages ago. Ironically, even as it links us to these people, some of them halfway across the world, it actually separates us from those around us – hence the restaurant episode.

I know I might be contradicting myself. A few months ago, I wrote here about the wonder of being connected to others via social networking sites such as Facebook. While my view on this has not changed, these days I often wonder whether the quality of my life would be different had I not decided to buy a Smartphone a few months ago.

Before I sound preachy and hypocritical, I admit I might have been one of those people preoccupied with my phone in social gatherings at one time or another.

I try hard not to, but sometimes, when there is a lull in the conversation – that comfortable silence when you just don’t have anything to talk about, and it feels appropriate enough to stare at other people or out into space, and when your company begins to scan the society magazine she has taken from the front counter – I go back to my phone.

What usually happens next – after checking what people are doing on their Facebook statuses – is I realize I have been “away” briefly, so I would fumble for words to start a conversation, feeling guilty for doing something I actually disapprove of.

It hadn’t always been like this. For a while I resisted it the way I resisted those bulky Crocs sandals and puffy-sleeved batik dresses.

I have always prided myself on being able to withstand fads and the hype of the day – those Harry Potter books, Sex and The City-inspired cocktails and annoying new slang words that people seem to adopt so willingly into their vocabularies.

So when Blackberry and the 3.5G service took Jakarta’s phone users by storm, it was not that hard to resist. After all, it was only three years ago that I was a Blackberry user, when most people here still thought it was a type of fruit.

Back then I used it solely for work. Many people were baffled by this: Why would I take my job home and everywhere with me? The truth is, given the options of staying at the office till late or having to go home immediately to get back online, Blackberry was the most logical choice.

More than anything, it boosted the quality of my life. The push-mail function that continually streams in new email meant I could check my edited stories and address any queries on them between yoga sessions.

When I urgently needed to find information while having drinks with friends, I could scan wire stories or Google them on the Berry without having to get up from the bar stool. In short, by helping me keep in shape physically and socially, my performance at work also was up to standard.

But when I quit full-time journalism, I decided to quit Blackberry too, thinking that I had no need to be constantly on call. To complete that great leap from newspaper journalism to freelancing, I even switched to a MacBook laptop.

Around the same time people began to buy Blackberry in droves, and, ironically, not for work-related purposes. Most just use it so they can check their various social networking sites or chat with other users, while many just feel the need to buy it because everyone else has it. Whatever their reasons, I sneered at them.

Then, early this year, my phone died, forcing me to make an important decision: to Smartphone or not to Smartphone. In the end I did, as it seemed almost foolish not to spend an extra million rupiah for a phone with a capacity that is so much more than a regular phone. The rest is history.

Honestly, though, I have no regrets. It has kept me company on many occasions. I loathe waiting, so there is always a book or magazine in my bag in case I have to wait. This works in the doctor’s reception room or when waiting for a friend to show, but not so much in tedious bumper-to-bumper traffic.

Now, while waiting for the lights to turn green, I can browse friends’ newly uploaded pictures or let the world know how bad the traffic jam is. This is hardly a model for good driving, but I know thousands of others do this too, judging from the updated tweets and Facebook statuses of many of my friends.

The biggest downside, however, is its convenience and accessibility. Because it is so easy to multitask, it lessens the intensity of certain activities I normally enjoy – like watching favorite TV shows.

It also seems to have encroached into the space for stillness in me. Except when I am meditating, or practicing or teaching yoga, the phone is always within my reach, beckoning me to check what is going on in my virtual community every once in a while without having to switch on and wait for the booting process as I would with a computer.

And before I know it, I have already typed in what I am doing or thinking at the moment, regardless of its relevance to those who read it.

If this is a glimpse of how life will be in the future, maybe there will be no need to ever meet another person in person again.

Now, that’s a scary thought.

+ Devi Asmarani  

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