The lonely and unreasonable generation

“It’s very easy,” he invariably says. “You just need to know this button and that. No need to worry about the rest.”

He knows me well enough to know I can only handle so much technical information. 

After the Brother is all set, he whips up something from his pocket. “I have to show you a new toy,” he says, his eyes gleaming. “This is cool.”

He then points this thing onto my wall, a light screen takes shape and he shows me a movie. It’s the new 3M MPro 150 Pocket Projector. Here’s your personal powerpoint presentation, movie, slide show, etc in a pocket. Just switch it on like a torchlight and show your presentations on any surface – no need for screen, projector, cables and all the paraphernalia. 

Malcolm says it works well for small groups. 

“I want one,” I say. I am an easy sell. 

I imagined being able to watch a movie on my hotel bedroom wall without having to be forced to watch the fodder on TV. Of course, your hand might get tired from holding it up but maybe it comes with some sort of stand. Battery life is roughly two hours, which should just about last through one movie.

I started reflecting then on the iPad that Malcolm’s also getting for me, and felt a wave of sadness wash over me.

What will happen to my social life? It seems every gadget we get these days is destined to make us less social, lonelier.

It started with music directly piped into our ears. We used to share music, listen to it together in a room. Now we don’t know if who’s listening to what. It’s all in the iPod.

I am a bookworm. As a child, I couldn’t get enough because my parents didn’t have enough to afford them. Being a younger child, I got hand-me-down books from my sister. Then when I got a scholarship, books came from the Hainanese clan association. 

It’s probably this deprivation that led to my life-long obsession with books. I buy more than I read. 

The conversations I have struck up over books on airplanes. The friends I have made through books. The people I have met at bookstores as we stand there browsing and deciding what to get. I love the idea of cafes and resorts, when you are on holiday, where you can leave your books and pick up other people’s.

Will all these disappear because everything will be on the iPad and no one will know what you are reading, and we will all be reduced to anonymous listeners and readers? 

Are we destined to get lonelier in the physical world – look at what the smart phone has reduced us and especially our young to – and do all our socialising in the online world? 

Wouldn’t it be great if the two could come together – so maybe on the iPad at the back, there could be a “lifestream” showing “I am now reading xxx” and “I have read xxx”?

I mentioned this to a guy friend who immediately said, “What if it was an app that said you were reading something smart like “The Naked Ape” but actually you were reading Hustler?”

Trust a guy to come up with that. But I think he’s got a point – the point being that whatever happens, we shouldn’t lose the point of reading – and that is, to share, to start conversations, to exchange. 

Meanwhile, with the MPro in my pocket, I will not even have the opportunity anymore to make friends of the technical guys who are always working out how to set up my Mac for a presentation.

I am reminded of the words written by Charles Handy in his book, “The Age of Unreason”, which was published more than 20 years ago in 1989.  

“Rather like central heating, the telephone and its attachments made it possible for people today to work together without being together in one place. The scattered organization is now a reality. The implications are considerable. It is not an unmixed blessing, for being together has always been part of the fun. As Pascal once said, “All the world’s ills stem from the fact that a man cannot sit in a room alone.” Increasingly, he or she may have to.”

Featured image credit (using tablet) : iStock