I wrote about people with ear buds in walking through the world tethered to some indoor environment a while back, but today this week I am fascinated by cops on their cell phones. Both of these situations reflect our unhealthy relationship with technology which from my vantage point is being driven by APIs. I know many refuse to see it, but being on our phones so much is not good for us individually, but also for our wider society. A cop’s job is to be paying attention to the world and working to make us safer, and when they are on their phones they are not doing that.
It is hard to tell if technology is distracting us or is revealing that most of our jobs are theater and bullshit, but either way it isn’t healthy. I encounter hundreds of people completely tuned out of the physical world on their cell phones each day riding my back and walking through the city. If the job of a police officer is such an important role in our society, why are they…hell, why aren’t we all taking police being on their phones more seriously? If subways are so dangerous, why aren’t those officers paying attention to what is going on around us all?
I can point at your average citizen standing in the middle of the bike path with ear buds in looking at their phone and say it is bad for society, and people might snicker and brush it away. But when you have entire political parties running campaigns on the threat that exists on our subways and you have law enforcement playing candy crush on the platform, I pull the alarm on not just policing bullshit, but the fear mongering as well as use of technology in our daily lives—-things are clearly out of balance and it is bigger than just artificial intelligence.
