Talking to a wall

I pad down the back hallway and exit the office through the door marked “Private.”  As I insert my key into the lock to throw the dead bolt, I hear a man speaking in a loud voice.

Not quite twenty yards away, he teeters on the sidewalk in front of the business that abuts our office in this strip mall, head shaven, dressed in a colorful T-shirt, short pants that fall below the knee, white cotton socks and high-top tennis shoes.  Back and forth he ambles, shouting phrases and epithets, gesticulating with his arms as though he were a priest invoking the gods before this makeshift altar of brick and mortar.

The community mental health services agency is housed at the rear of the parking lot.  Many times clients opt for a midday stroll down to the Dunkin’ Donuts for lunch or a coffee.  Mostly they just shuffle by, some seemingly lost in thought; others saunter in pairs or groups of three, quietly murmuring among themselves.  This is the first fellow I’ve seen in a state of heightened agitation.

I step into the parking lot and walk to my car.  He’s still spewing epithets as I fiddle with the key in the lock.  I open the car door and pause momentarily to assure myself that he hasn’t got a gun.

This scenario brings to mind Oliver Sacks’ description of a mentally ill person he encountered one afternoon on the streets of New York.

“My eye was caught by a grey-haired woman in her sixties, who was apparently the centre of a most amazing disturbance, though what was happening, what was so disturbing, was not at first clear to me.  Was she having a fit? . . . [A] slow smile, monstrously accelerated, would become a violent, milliseconds-long grimace; an ample gesture, accelerated, would become a farcical convulsive movement.”  (“The Possessed” in The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat.)

Was this in fact what I was witnessing here in this man acting out before my eyes?

I start the car and drop the power windows.  The man’s shouts become louder, echoing across the expanse of macadam.  Perhaps I should notify someone.  Perhaps I should return to the office and call the police.

As I ponder my civic duty, the man turns and strides up the sidewalk.  Suddenly I see it:  the appendage protruding from his left ear.  He continues to spew venom into the air, but now I know that most likely he’s not mentally ill.

He’s merely carrying on a semi-private conversation through his cell phone with Bluetooth technology.

Conversation in the time of digital communication

According to a recent New York Times article, “more than half a million college students now use wireless devices to register class attendance and take quizzes.” Not only has digital communication gone wireless and mobile; it now dictates our ability to participate in the public domain.

In the beginning there was e-mail, of course. That technological touchstone quickly morphed into instant messaging. Online chat rooms eventually gave way to My Space and Facebook. Nowadays, virtually every online publication accepts open comments from anonymous readers, which has further served to alter the course of our electronic discourse (it’s become blatantly more coarse, of course).

When I was a kid, every boy’s dream was to have a walkie-talkie. You could converse with a friend wirelessly within a reasonably close proximity—something much better than tin-can telephones on a string. Walkie-talkies morphed into cell phones, which eventually allowed the user to capture and send digital photographs and text messages. Nowadays such devices permit limitless access to online services—we surf the web, check our e-mail, capture digitalized documents, listen to radio broadcasts, and even view TV programs, as well as keep up the chatter with our colleagues and friends.

Hand-held devices have evolved into thinner, more compact units, capable of ever-increasing data storage. Two years ago, when I replaced my Nokia cell phone with a more modern (and instantly out-of-date) Motorola, I elected not to purchase the higher end model with a built-in camera. Meantime, my colleagues send instant messages from their BlackBerries, Droids and iPhones.

Apps are the latest big thing, of course. Download them for free at the iTunes or Windows store online, or pay for the more sophisticated versions. Another New York Times article highlights a “fistful of iPhone apps that will save you time, make your life easier and make you smile.”

More and more, it seems that we spend less and less time interacting with our fellow human beings face to face, in the flesh.

Recently, I awoke with the thought that what we really need in the next generation of digital communication is the I-Thou Phone (marketed as the ithouPhone)—a device that would allow two people to speak together face to face at table over coffee in a quiet parlor, far from the madding crowd.