What a difference!

As I mentioned earlier in one of the Blogs. I was on jury duty. And what a difference! Amazing as we all went for our well deserved 15 minute break. The jury selection is a long prodigious process necessary to come up with as much as possible fair minded jurors.

So here we all are, well except for my solitary pacing up and down the hall taking in all the nuances of the speckled floor around the drinking fountains, the endless series of fluorescent lights, the cameras and antennas., the small shells petrified in the sandstone walls.

Everyone, literally everyone, every single body in the hallway for 15 minutes straight remained motionless- that's about 55 people! Not one word was uttered once, and no one looked at anyone else. Amazing, so totally different than a few years ago when jury duty called out to me. It's a citizen's obligation and though it's a pain, it's also a privilege.

So there soon appeared a strange smile on my face that came from nowhere. This is comedy material of the highest order! It was like a time warp cartoon in which all human activity ceases as everyone stares, hunched over, peering at their telephone screens. It must be so utterly fascinating. But it wasn't really something to smile about and a bit of shame for seeing the humor and sadness came over me, not unlike...

         “I feel tremendous guilt,” admitted Chamath Palihapitiya, former Vice President of User Growth at Facebook, to an audience of Stanford students. He was  responding to a question about his involvement in exploiting consumer behavior. “The short-term, dopamine-driven feedback loops that we have created are destroying how society works,”
(my addition, when the phone is missing) About 73% of people claim to experience this unique flavor of anxiety, which makes sense when you consider that adults in the US spend an average of 2-4 hours per day tapping, typing, and swiping on their devices—that adds up to over 2,600 daily touches. - from Science in the News, Harvard University

How much exposure does that produce to our eyes, and body. One time an employee said to me she was having a strange ailment with her right index finger. It had become red and slightly swollen. The first question that came to mind was, do you text? Immediately she made the connection because she always did and her immediate response was NO, NO I will not give up texting! End of conversation.

til later, Michael

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