I have become so accustomed to seeing people on their smartphones, and using my own that if anyone has less than the newest smartphone I judge them (unconsciously). The status quo it seems is to have a smartphone and be on it all the time, staying connected and engulfing yourself in a digital world. Don’t people see what they’re missing out on? It turns out that iTime is not very civilized, it is almost inhuman. “iTime is the time of instantaneous connection and diversion that technology opens up for us”(Niehaus) If people are not constantly “online” and anything other than that is uncivilized because all civilized people need to be social, or need to be do something at every given moment. “Its hard to just be on that bus because I am used to the frissons of consumer culture that will not let me rest, and because, as a postmodern person, I cannot relax into the bulky linearity of former centuries; happiness is now or never – always”(Niehaus). People now need stimulation all the time or they feel empty. iTime tends to exacerbate the tendency to be elsewhere and elsewhen; even though it is only in the present that “being conscious coincide” and that “life is available”. Being on that bus, then is difficult because consciousness, by its sheer nature constantly evokes past and future, it is angst that keeps me from just being and instead sends me into iTime- the nakedness of the present where the nature of being shows itself unalloyed. (Niehaus) Although smartphones are something we hold so dearly, our use of it is civilized only because we render it so. The real civilized people are those who are not constantly on their phones and engulf themselves in the world around them.
Niehaus, Noah. "'Whenever You Are, Be Sometime Else'. A Philosophical Analysis of Smartphone Time." 'Whenever You Are, Be Sometime Else'. A Philosophical Analysis of Smartphone Time. N.p., n.d. Web. 08 Mar. 2015. <http://www.academia.edu/3664754/Whenever_you_are_be_sometime_el se._A_philosophical_analysis_of_smartphone_time>.
Niehaus, Noah. "'Whenever You Are, Be Sometime Else'. A Philosophical Analysis of Smartphone Time." 'Whenever You Are, Be Sometime Else'. A Philosophical Analysis of Smartphone Time. N.p., n.d. Web. 08 Mar. 2015. <http://www.academia.edu/3664754/Whenever_you_are_be_sometime_el se._A_philosophical_analysis_of_smartphone_time>.
--Ahmed