For the second time in a decade, The New York Times is on a tear to uncover the hidden dangers of WMDs.
No, this time the subject is not Saddam’s non-existent nukes, but the dire threat posed by the widgets of mass distraction (WMD) that permeate every nook and cranny of our life: text-enabled cell phones and smart phones.
Since last July, The Times has published at least 21 articles on the hazards and potentially deadly consequences of drivers talking and texting while behind the wheel as part of its series “Driven to Distraction.” For an institution challenged to maintain its reputation as the paper of record in face of unremitting downsizing and layoffs, the series is exhaustive and exhausting in its thoroughness as it apportions culpability all around.
It blames the cell phone industry for irresponsibly promoting its devices as way to turn idle drive-time into productive work-time despite knowledge of the risks; attention-deficited, multi-tasking drivers who focus their attention everywhere but on the road in front of them; and lackadaisical state lawmakers who have refused to take the problem seriously. (The Times cites one federal study that found that 11 percent of all drivers were yakking on their cell phone at any particular time. Only 11 percent? Based upon my extensive driving experience in New York, where nearly every-other driver seems to have a phone surgically stapled to their ear, that’s the most egregious undercount since Bush vs. Gore.)
I initially felt that that The Times was intentionally over blowing the issue to some degree. (An acquaintance, a former Times-person for three decades, recently told me that the editors were pinning some of their 2009 Pulitzer aspirations upon the series.) One of my old colleagues from Newsweek speculated that one of the top editors at The Times must have been rear-ended by a distracted, teenaged texter recently and decided to do something about it.
But the more I mull it over, I’m increasingly convinced they’re underestimating the dimensions of the problem. And it’s not just the multitudes preoccupied by their iPhone while driving.
Truth is, the epidemic of mass distraction is more prevalent—and perilous—than the H1N1 virus. We’ve become a society of gadget-fixated obsessives, glamoured by the latest the shiny personal electronic device of the moment. Whenever I’ve ventured into Manhattan recently I’ve been astounded by the high proportion of multi-tasking pedestrians ambling down the sidewalks with their eyes glued to their phones, fingers flailing furiously over their tiny keyboards as they urgently tap, tap, tap away. Or they’ll walk with the head bent over a cramped, two-inch screen attempting to read something, utterly oblivious to the bustle about them as they clutch their smartphones like talismans: Yea, thought I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will see no evil, for my iPhone and Blackberry they comfort me.
Tales of ridiculous, avoidable accidents that have befallen distracted cell-yakkers and -texters have spawned a new category of urban cautionary tales, such as the Staten Island girl who was so engrossed texting a friend that she walked into an open manhole in her path. While she escaped with only a few bruises (and the uncomfortable knowledge that she came close to winning a Darwin Award), not every preoccupied pedestrian is quite so lucky.
One company sees an opportunity for a technological solution—an app called Type n Walk that harnesses the built-in camera to display a live image of the street directly ahead to your phone screen as you text.
Excuse me, but what’s wrong with this picture?!
The paradox inherent in modern communications technology is that while it connects us to almost anyone in the world in real time, it also tends to isolate us from our actual physical environment and leave us suspended in a virtual electronic bubble of our own making and oblivious to the larger world around us.
Caveat textor.
Brave New Whirl 
Great post, too bad they don’t give Pulitzers for creative writing on the internet!