I have a new piece in openDemocracy, exploring cultural and economic transitions, via the shift from a society of cigarettes to one of smartphones. Here's a chunk:
...on a deeper psychological and cultural level, the difference between these two framing devices could scarcely be more profound. This touches on the malaise of anxiety that has become the dominant psychiatric disorder of our age. While smoking affirms the limits of time and space around us, smart phones do precisely the opposite. While one allows you to spend a finite chunk of time in a given space, as a break from the flux of work or travel, the other connects you to a more complex and fluid world beyond your immediate situation.
As framing devices go, the smart phone suffers from the inherent problem that it is leaky. It is constantly connecting us to other times, other places, absent people, absent places, some in the future and some in the past. The selfie may seem narcissistic, but it is captured with the possibility of being seen by others who are not present (at least, not yet). If it is an expression of anything, it is one of paranoia: paranoia that human memory is no longer adequate for experiences, that one may be seen by others, that one may not be seen by others.
This is a restless condition. Where the cigarette allows us to (in the immortal words of Oasis's horrifically bombastic 1997 album) be here now, a smart phone allows us to do precisely the opposite. In this psychological sense, it is the very antithesis of a cigarette. The transition from the one object in our pocket to the other speaks of a more general shift in the character of capitalism.
Unfortunately there are two cigarette-functions that are not only lacking, but are actually perversely negative with e-cigs and smartphones.
One, closely mirroring author Davies' thoughts, is the lack of a specially delimited time period "to have a... whatever." A cigarette was very defined in that sense. A smartphone is wildly varying, depending on whether you have a quick TXT or ride a Googled train of readings. Except for relatively rare chain-smokers, cigarette-times were discrete, and punctuated with fairly regular non-cigarette times. E-Cigs on the other hand, particularly if one is a smoker trying to be "healthier" by vaping low or non-nicotine e-juices, lend themselves to continuous use, taking a puff every minute or two, perhaps stopping ONLY for sex and meals.
The other is social connectedness. Yes, you have moments of "connection" with smartphones, but it is a sterile and disembodied connection, and it is rare that they encourage moments of intimacy among strangers who might well grow closer during and beyond them. Cigarettes, particularly before the Antismokers' attacks through taxation, were an open invitation to share with others, either offering one to a stranger or bumming one from a stranger -- in both cases opening the door to lengthier and more intense communication if the parties desired it. Cigarettes also had the unique quality of needing two elements -- the cigarette and the flame -- and if one desired communication with an unknown smoker and were too shy to just walk up and say "Hi! Me Michael! Who You?" one could always just say, "Excuse me, do you have a light?" -- thereby breaking the conversation-opening barrier and simultaneously establishing a "food-sharing" type relationship or asking or granting a boon.
The nature of opening the communication was also ideal in the lack of risk involved: walking up to a stranger and introducing oneself forced one to risk rejection, while being walked up to someone who introduces him or her self forces a conflict between the social urge to be polite and the fear of opening oneself to a further, possibly unwanted, intrusion that such an introduction invites. The sharing of a lighter or match has neither risk: one is unlikely to be rejected, and one is under very little obligation to continue the interaction to a higher level.
How important are those functions compared to possible health risks from smoking? Maybe not very... but they shouldn't be ignored. They *are* something that we lose when we lose smoking.
- MJM
Posted by: Cantiloper | April 04, 2015 at 06:15 AM