Hazards of BlackBerry-walking
The best way to get from one place to another here in New York, where I'm on a business trip, is to walk. Except that walking has become increasingly hazardous.
It's not the nastily dressed business folks who come up behind you and insist on brushing your shoulder as they waft to another interesting appointment. It's the people walking straight at you, typing into their BlackBerry. (My statistically insignificant research showed 75 percent were BlackBerry users. You know, men in cashmere coats and tasseled loafers.)
It happened to me the first time just outside a Cellulite Center on Madison Ave. A man was walking in full stride from the north, pushing his thumbs into his keyboard as if he was a masseur trying to rid a client of a very difficult adhesion.
Naively, I believed that he had to look up at some point before he crashed into my two-pack. Instead, his BlackBerry Storm put a dent in my duodenum. It all happened in peculiar slow motion, like a Volvo crash test.
He looked up, gave me a momentary stare as if he was heartily pissed that I'd disrupted his messaging, and marched on without so much as an "excuse me."
The next time I was about to be struck by someone caught in their BlackBerry blind spot, I danced out of the way, using a move I'd seen Mark Cuban perfect on Dancing With The Stars. The rather hairy man didn't even look up.
Then I decided on a new tactic. I would allow people to walk into me, even perhaps nudging my way slightly into their path, just to see whether and how they would react.
The score so far: three incidents. Two people looked up, as if I had dropped my trousers in the middle of their business meeting. And one told me to expletive watch where I was expletive going.
This leads me to wonder whether walking and PDAing might be worth a little DAing. Surely, some fine district attorneys might find it in themselves to create a little misdemeanor out of this peculiar habit. You know, like jaywalking. Or leaving animal excrement forlorn and unbagged.
Or perhaps, at least, we could have little texting areas on street corners every three or four blocks. Sponsored by BlackBerry. Or Volvo.
Chris Matyszczyk is an award-winning creative director who advises major corporations on content creation and marketing. He brings an irreverent, sarcastic, and sometimes ironic voice to the tech world. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET. 
The key to this blog entry for me was "where I'm on a business trip". That means you're not a native New Yorker, which explains much in this article.
If you were a native New Yorker, you wouldn't have written it, because what you experienced is no different than what is experienced thousands of times per day in that city -- people showing no regard for each other. Rush rush rushing to some self-important meeting or some such, concepts such as 'common courtesy' are foreign to the majority of inhabitants of that city. They're too busy being New Yorkers and deluding themselves that the rest of the world cares.
Have fun there, experience some of the wonderful cultural experiences there are to be had there (food, museums, etc.) and then leave.
"Nice place to visit but..."
Cheers,
- Bill
Oh, I hate to break it to you, Bill. But I lived in NY for a couple of years. Quite recently too. This is far, far worse than anything I've seen.
Chris
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GdzUZDDi5aM
A spoof commercial from at least three years ago that deals with this very problem, from the Rick Mercer Report on CBC TV,
that was a bit rude
Texting has indeed added a new dimension to the self-absorbed here in the city, where they not only require others to look out for them, but pose a risk to themselves and others. We can only hope that Darwin will take care of this through winnowing of the gene pool as the clueless texters encounter less understanding objects...like city buses.
-avi
Yes, avi, you're right. People did at least look ahead of themselves. Now, they are, dare I suggest, so far up themselves that they see nothing but the tunnel.
Can we really hope that Darwin will sort this problem? Can anyone?
Chris
I'm not surprised though... I find that many people who aren't even texting don't usually look before they walk somewhere into someone else's path. This just adds one more level.
Next Up: The Blackberry F/P
Featuring forcefield/phaser protection in the malevolence level of your choice:
Ice Blue -Give the offending party a touch of frostbite.
Sun Burn - Give 'em a little face-level heat and mark them with red-face as a warning to others
Body Heat - Scorch their clothes and leave 'em smoldering.
Retina Melt - (Personal-injury attorney model only) Blind 'em & etch your phone number on their arm.
Olive Drab Oblivion - (MILSPEC version only) - Melt them into a puddle of olive-drab molecules
Carbon Dust - When the blackness in your heart is the only color that will do.
The PDAing should be handled like a fender bender, the one bumping the other car is at fault, so the one texting is at fault for not looking where they are going. That's it, end of story, and if they are pissed than oh well.
Because we beat this topic to death back in the first half of the decade, and we didn't mention iPhones then either. And what is this "PDA" you're talking about?
- by itchief February 19, 2009 8:08 AM PST
- I noticed the same behavior in Philly but many of them were dangerously close to interacting with moving vehicles. There was an article a few months ago showing how London was "solving" the problem by adding protective wrapping to light poles and street signs and painting lines on the sidewalks. For person-to-person encounters I suggest a strategically placed elbow...
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