In the modern day society, we have one of the most useful tools in the universe – the internet. However the internet is extremely useful, we have taken advantage of its entertainment purposes more than the educational.
The internet’s greatest use is to bring people together. With the internet, the entire world is connected at any given moment. It seems as if we would be achieving great things with this tool, but it actually has disconnected us more than connect us. Everyone is so glued to their phone screen all the time that nobody is even paying attention to their own reality. Recently a photographer named Eric Pickersgill depicted this modern day issue excellently.
He named his project “removed” and you can obviously see why. He photographed different people in different situations when they were using their phone – except he removed the phone from the photo to give a more accurate depiction of how we are spending our realities. He was inspired to perform this project when he was sitting alone in a local cafe and he made an observation.
“Family sitting next to me at Illium café in Troy, NY is so disconnected from one another. Not much talking. Father and two daughters have their own phones out. Mom doesn’t have one or chooses to leave it put away. She stares out the window, sad and alone in the company of her closest family. Dad looks up every so often to announce some obscure piece of info he found online. Twice he goes on about a large fish that was caught. No one replies. I am saddened by the use of technology for interaction in exchange for not interacting. This has never happened before and I doubt we have scratched the surface of the social impact of this new experience. Mom has her phone out now.”
