Shundo David Haye – Zen Priest

‘It’s about capture. All mediums in the past have had partial capture. What blows my mind and what I think is the paradigm shift is, this is total. When I get on a train in the morning and I look down a carriage, there isn’t a single person who is looking up from their phones. So that was my question: What happens when it’s everybody? And it’s not just a medium, but it’s also the way you work, live. What happens when you enter into the medium and that’s how your life is structured?

I have total faith that people can metabolize technology. And I also know that technology is a culture. And though I’ve missed most of it, I know that the internet is a culture and it’s joyful to so many people. And it’s been nothing but L.O.L.s and pleasure and there’s been delight all over it, just as there was delight in television for me. But the political consequences are clear. It’s so boring to say, but just the effect on people’s ability to attend has been radical.’ (from the New York Times)

I was trying to find a piece I thought I wrote a few years ago about how I ended up chatting to a French family on BART as I was the only one not buried in my phone, but couldn’t turn it up in my search. In any case, my feeling is that being on our phones all the time is stressful as it doesn’t give our mind any time to loosen its grip and start to drift into reverie.