As I walk into the café on Tuesday, March 27th at 12:00pm, there is a line full of people to order from the café, that goes back until the door of the café. I sit down in the main seating area of the café, and I immediately notice the distinct difference between the main area of the café and the back part of the café, which is separated by a wall lined with trashcans and utensils standing directly in the middle. The main area, in which I am seated in at a round table, is quite noisy and busy with people walking in and out of the cafe with food, and others are sitting at tables conversing and eating with friends. However, in the back part of the café, it is significantly less noisy and the people in that room are seated at a booth along
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As I talked with the elderly man, who sat at the table to my right, with a newspaper in hand, he explained how social culture has dramatically changed over the years with the creation of the mobile phone. Before people obtained the ability to instantly send messages and converse over mobile phones, he explained, people would normally gather at coffee shops for a number of reasons; including casual business meetings, conversing with friends over coffee, or even to just enjoy the daily newspaper over a cup of coffee. Putting myself in this situation for observation, I suddenly found how obvious the influences of technology were and how they can greatly impact our social interactions. Technology in the café, as I observed, takes away the ability to “live in the moment”, meaning people are only half-engaged in a conversation and are easily drawn away or distracted from the task at hand. Carol Delaney in “Disorientation and Orientation”, brings in interesting points that support how “cultures are conditioned by the global networks of power and resources in which they are embedded” (Delaney, 2011). Furthermore, her work helps to explain the widespread phenomena of the mobile phone and its ability to become naturalized within society on a global …show more content…
On the first day of observation, I took notes of a group of girls sitting at a table together, with three of them sitting on their phone. I noticed how the girls would quickly change their focus from their phone to the present conversation. The girls on their phones were really only partially paying attention to the conversation or not at all, which made the conversations die out rather quickly, and the table would go silent for a few moments before someone else said something. At the other table I mentioned, to the right of their’s, two girls and one guy were sitting together, while one of the girls intensely typed away on her computer. The interactions that took place here were strictly between the girl, who did not have her laptop out, and the guy. The two didn’t even bother to involve the girl on her laptop in their conversation. In both of these cases, the people who had technology present at the table were only half-present in the moment or not at all. As a result, people are missing out on the opportunities to connect with their friends. Not only does this distract the person from participating in the conversation, but it also shows the people that they are not as important as what is being
As I talked with the elderly man, who sat at the table to my right, with a newspaper in hand, he explained how social culture has dramatically changed over the years with the creation of the mobile phone. Before people obtained the ability to instantly send messages and converse over mobile phones, he explained, people would normally gather at coffee shops for a number of reasons; including casual business meetings, conversing with friends over coffee, or even to just enjoy the daily newspaper over a cup of coffee. Putting myself in this situation for observation, I suddenly found how obvious the influences of technology were and how they can greatly impact our social interactions. Technology in the café, as I observed, takes away the ability to “live in the moment”, meaning people are only half-engaged in a conversation and are easily drawn away or distracted from the task at hand. Carol Delaney in “Disorientation and Orientation”, brings in interesting points that support how “cultures are conditioned by the global networks of power and resources in which they are embedded” (Delaney, 2011). Furthermore, her work helps to explain the widespread phenomena of the mobile phone and its ability to become naturalized within society on a global …show more content…
On the first day of observation, I took notes of a group of girls sitting at a table together, with three of them sitting on their phone. I noticed how the girls would quickly change their focus from their phone to the present conversation. The girls on their phones were really only partially paying attention to the conversation or not at all, which made the conversations die out rather quickly, and the table would go silent for a few moments before someone else said something. At the other table I mentioned, to the right of their’s, two girls and one guy were sitting together, while one of the girls intensely typed away on her computer. The interactions that took place here were strictly between the girl, who did not have her laptop out, and the guy. The two didn’t even bother to involve the girl on her laptop in their conversation. In both of these cases, the people who had technology present at the table were only half-present in the moment or not at all. As a result, people are missing out on the opportunities to connect with their friends. Not only does this distract the person from participating in the conversation, but it also shows the people that they are not as important as what is being