Stop right now

It is some­thing extra spe­cial, isn’t it, this smart, wired world when you are avail­able 24/7 and ab­solutely every­thing and every­one is avail­able to you?

No. With in­creas­ing fre­quency it is any­thing but.

When do you switch off ex­actly? When you are sleep­ing? Is that it? Does the end­less chat and in­for­ma­tion tor­rent fill you with a joie de vivre, or, hand on heart, is it all be­com­ing im­pos­si­ble to man­age and rather nau­se­at­ing/de­press­ing? The com­pul­sion is to keep up with every­thing, to not miss out, com­pounded in re­lent­less in­cre­ments every time some­thing pops up on the de­vice you can­not now live with­out. You know, the one that’s in your pocket at this very mo­ment, or sit­ting on your desk or (ffs) on the table next to your plate.

The day is fast ap­proach­ing when there will be ther­apy groups sit­ting in cir­cles - Hello, my name is Ivan Ob­ses­sion and I (ping) ........can’t (ping).......ig­nore pings(ping).

I so hope the woman who was dri­ving next to me along the Di­ag­o­nal the other day while also hav­ing a video chat on her phone is read­ing this. Stag­ger­ingly, she was obliv­i­ous to the traf­fic swerv­ing out of her way and the ca­coph­ony of horns. So too the man in a van com­ing to­wards me on my side of the wind­ing moun­tain road be­tween Reus and Falset. I am most ap­pre­cia­tive that he man­aged to fin­ish his text just be­fore he wiped me out.

What the hell is wrong with peo­ple? Every day I see some­one ei­ther on their phone or tex­ting while dri­ving, and I do not spend much time on the road these days. Is the ob­ses­sive need to grasp our elec­tronic dum­mies greater than the grossly ob­vi­ous risk of being re­spon­si­ble for a death? Do you think this blind stu­pid­ity is reach­ing epi­demic pro­por­tions? The tech­nol­ogy may be smart, but such dim­ness beg­gars be­lief.

As a tax­payer I’m happy for the Mossos to have a day out on the top deck of Barcelona tour buses. Their col­leagues in the UK, a na­tion fa­mous for its dou­ble deck­ers, have been rid­ing high to watch for un­sus­pect­ing mo­torists below who are tak­ing a hand off the wheel and their eyes off the road. It has proved ef­fec­tive.

But let’s not view this issue of phones and cars in iso­la­tion. The con­stant rush of in­for­ma­tion and so-called com­mu­ni­ca­tion is car­ry­ing us with it in our every day un­sus­tain­able haste, im­pa­tience and di­min­ish­ing at­ten­tion span.

The com­pul­sion to jug­gle a phone and a steer­ing wheel is be­cause the no­tion of stop­ping is an anath­ema in this day and age.

I strongly sug­gest you do stop. A smart phone, tablet, lap­top etc are ex­tra­or­di­nary tools that have their time and place. While you are at the con­trols of a lump of metal hurtling along is not one of them.

And, as I am let­ting off steam, never, ever, let a ping in­ter­rupt real con­ver­sa­tion . PLEASE.