Smart Mobs

I felt the points made by Fortunate in chapter 8 were very interesting. He speaks to the problem of degeneration of civility in human communication and asks, "How is it that artificial communication can have the better over natural communication?" He speaks about technology and how we are replacing humans with devices. We have become products of multi tasking and will so rudely answer our phones while a person face to face with us is in mid sentence basically saying, "The person at the other end of this cell phone holds more importance than you do." We are becoming incredibly rude and this trend is becoming more of a lifestyle than anything. I feel that our government is trying to take a hold on our newly rude tendencies by trying to make talking on your cell phone or listening to your ipod while crossing the street illegal. But then you have to ask yourself where the boundaries will end? If we made every distraction illegal then everyone would be given tickets everyday. I feel that people don't know how to handle these advances in technology so they are trying to make laws in order to get a grip on them but I am not sure that this will help either. If we are going to say that you can't talk on your cell phone while crossing the street then we might as well say that you can't walk a dog or push a stroller across the street because you will be paying more attention to that then you will the cars coming toward you. It's the same question I ask myself about not being able to talk on your cell phone in the car. Then we need to start pulling over women putting on lipstick and pulling over people who are eating their breakfast on the way to work. Where will the line be drawn?