Clyde Haberman from the NYTimes interviewed a bunch of MacArthur Genius Fellows about cell phones, Ipods, and other gadgetry disconnecting us from physical reality, and this is what Jonathan Lethem had to say:
“Nonconnectivity becomes a commodity, something to cherish….You won’t hear different, particularly from novelists. You need so much ruminative time to build these elaborate alternate realities. Every novelist is running away from the telephone. Has been for 100 years.”
Not me. If anything, I run towards them. I see a crazy woman walking down the sidewalk wielding a cell phone? That’s the one I follow. She’s bound to say something nutty. Just the sort of thing that might spark a story.
My rule: save the Ipod for the car. On foot, follow the cell phones.
better yet earbuds in, but with not sound. then you can listen without being noticed. then again, people seem not to care about what they talk about on their cells in the first place.