Is it fashionable to be rude?

The last couple of posts have dealt with mobile technology and manners. We've become so accustomed to our smartphones that we take for granted the ability to be connected nearly 24/7 to family, friends and even work. We can check email, send a tweet, watch a video, upload a photo or troll the internet virtually any time, any place.

But do we know when to power it down?

Thanks to David Carr's timely feature story in Sunday's New York Times, "Keep Your Thumbs Still When I'm Talking To You," I've got even more reason to keep myself in check.

Carr considers the digital revolution and what it has wrought, prompted by his recent attendance at the South by Southwest Interactive conference, where he moderated a panel called "I'm So Productive, I Never Get Anything Done."

Featured speakers competed with a screen in almost every seat, he noted. Laptops were everywhere. Tablets even more so. People traveled hundreds or thousands of miles to the conference in Austin, Texas, only to become part of a multitasking mass of thumbing-and-texting zombies. Remarkably, Carr writes:

...once the badge-decorated horde spilled into the halls or went to the hundreds of parties that mark the ritual, almost everyone walked or talked with one eye, or both, on a little screen. We were adjacent but essentially alone, texting and talking our way through what should have been a great chance to engage flesh-and-blood human beings. The wait in line for panels, badges or food became one more chance to check in digitally instead of an opportunity to meet someone you didn’t know.

During Carr's panel, the biggest reaction in the session came, he said, when Anthony De Rosa, a product manager and programmer at Reuters and a big presence on Twitter and Tumblr, said that mobile connectedness has eroded fundamental human courtesies.

“When people are out and they’re among other people they need to just put everything down,” he said. “It’s fine when you’re at home or at work when you’re distracted by things, but we need to give that respect to each other back.” 

His words brought sudden and tumultuous applause. It was sort of a moment, given that we were sitting amid some of the most digitally devoted people in the hemisphere. Perhaps somewhere on the way to the merger of the online and offline world, we had all stepped across a line without knowing it.

Amen.

Ever had someone whip out their phone in the middle of a conversation with you?
Ever had someone check their email during a meal or a meeting?
Or make a phone call from, ahem, a questionable location? (I'm thinking of the time I heard one side of a conversation coming from a stall in the men's restroom at a local theater. Seriously.)


I'd like to think I'm already on the right side of smartphone etiquette, though not perfect, by any means. Thanks to Carr's piece I'll be a little more vigilant -- both about my own behavior and someone else's bad manners.

Photo illustration: Tony Cenicola, The New York Times