I clearly remember the first time I physically held a brand new iPhone, three days after the first one launched. I'd done a lot of research into it, was fairly interested, but once I held it, well, something snapped and I immediately went and got one. I thought it would be a fun tool, but I always saw it as a tool to be used judiciously. I did not expect the sheer levels and depths of its ubiquity to become what they have.
I think the iPhone has been the single largest gateway into some very serious rewiring of humanity, both in a metaphoric and literal sense.
I genuinely feel we have short-circuited an area of our brains wired for longer thought processes into short-attention only actions. The sheer distance these objects put physically between us is madness (in terms of less in-person interactions).
The re-wiring of the world, the way life is now presented through these mediums and is designed to provoke big instant emotional responses devoid of rational thought (which, BTW, is OK IMO when Richy's scoring goals like THAT!) and the way in which genuine news has been. replaced by opinions dressed as news, are scary.
