And you won't. I can crack a lens at fifty paces.
We don’t experience interruptions as disruptions anymore. But they make
it hard to settle into serious conversations with ourselves and with
other people because emotionally, we keep ourselves available to be
taken away from everything. I talk to young people about etiquette when
they go out to dinner, and they explain to me that when in a group of,
say, seven, they make sure that at least three people are “heads up” in
the “talking” conversation at any one time. Only then do they feel
permission to text. But it doesn’t have to be the same three people. In
these settings, the most commonly heard phrase is “Wait, what?” as one
person and then another drops back into the conversation and tries to
catch up. All of this has become the new normal.
- Sherry Turkle