I will’t Keep It In My Pants [Comment]

On the day of the San Francisco Giants World Series parade, I headed to the corner of California and Montgomery where I was sure I had a decent vantage to observe the players roll by in their rubber-wheeled cable cars.

My wife was thinking an analogous thing about her view as she held our four year-old son on her shoulders on the alternative side of the street.

Then the procession started and thousands of arms extended towards the sky. And the image of that, none of us could see the parade. Only our phones could. And what did all those phones see? The players’ video-recording devices staring right back at them.

Nearly everyone was distracted from the moment.

Don’t get me wrong. I wished my iPhone on that day. I was walking from my office and my wife and son were driving in from across town. Without a gradual series of calls and text messages, I never would have gotten a glimpse of the single visual I’ll remember from that day: My son’s fantastically handsome smile as he awaited the start of the parade.

But once the parade began, my iPhone went from being a useful gizmo to being the item of my deep compulsion. I knew the gang shots and player photos I’d take using my phone’s camera could be mediocre. I consciously reminded myself that any extended-arm video I shot would pale when put next to the footage I’d see on the inside track that night. Most importantly, I knew this gathering of thousands of folk in my city’s streets was really more about experiencing the energy than recording the visuals.

All of that pre-parade analysis went out the window once the first band marched past me. The recording device was just too close. I couldn’t resist. I took about forty photos and shot about twenty minutes of video.

Along with thousands of others – including the players themselves – I captured some digital snapshots, but I missed the moment. We walk around with what looks like infinite access in our pockets, and yet, we frequently experience our lives through two-inch screens.

Of course, the impulse to take photos at special events predates the camera phone. Plenty of people wish to get several decent shots at a kid’s birthday or during vacations. But the persistent proximity of digital cameras has made us so much more indiscriminate about choosing which moments are worth recording. Because our cameras are so close handy, we’ve developed a terror of missing the photo op. But we should always be so much more terrified of missing real life moments as they pass across the screens on our digital devices.

I needed my phone to get to my son. Then I stared at my phone for thirty minutes and missed the experience we were there for inside the first place. James Bennett gets at this technological dichotomy in his recent Atlantic piece : ” It sort of feels portion of the contemporary condition to feel simultaneously blessed and cursed, liberated and trapped, by technology.”

It’s a standard conflict. a couple of decades ago, my friend Isaac and I cut school and boarded a bus to monitor the 49ers parade. This was before cellphones and neither of us had a camera. I don’t remember a single visual from that day. But I do remember the feeling. I especially remember the feeling I had once I arrived home to search out my parents, who had no way of reaching me all day, waiting just inside my front door.

More recently I left my cellular phone in my car on a night once I was inside the eighth row for a Beyonce concert. I felt anxious because I was unreachable by some friends who were depending on me for a ride home – and more generally because I’m never without my phone. But once the concert started and the camera phones got pulled out of thousands of pants pockets, I saw the good thing about being phoneless. I was virtually the sole person in my section who had no device between my eyes and the stage. I was basically alone with Beyonce.

Towards the baseball season’s close, the Giants and their fans adopted a one-word mantra to reflect the experience of following the team: Torture. The large’s games were exciting and riveting, but they were so consistently close that they caused a heavy dose of stress for the players and fans alike.

I carry the same set of opposing forces in my pocket day by day. I couldn’t be more enthusiastic about the promise of these new technologies. I also couldn’t be more excited by my inability to keep them from taking on events as opposed to enhancing them.

Dave Pell is an online addict, early adopter and insider. He blogs regularly at Tweetage Wasteland .

Illustration by contributing illustrator Sam Spratt . Investigate cross-check Sam’s portfolio and become partial to his Facebook Artist’s Page .

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This post is tagged: digital snapshots, handsome smile, infinite access, san francisco giants, text messages, twenty minutes, video recording