Tag: smartphone

Each week, a columnist is confronted with a harvest of riveting issues and events to comment upon, more so in a country like ours where there are series of issues to write on, especially in these trying times. Today, I will however like to focus on an issue that has been on my mind for months now: how we use our smartphones during calamities.

Today‘s Smartphone‘s has been around for the last six years when Apple introduced the Smartphone in mass consumer market, but in reality the Smartphone has been in market since 1993. The difference between today‘s Smartphone and early Smartphone‘s is that early Smartphone‘s were predominantly meant for corporate users and used as enterprise devices and also those phone were too expensive for the general consumers. All that changed with Apple’s innovation. The boundary was stretched further with android phones.

I witnessed a shocking scene last December which unfortunately has becoming a recurring decimal in our society today. We got to a terrible accident scene where some people lost their lives. Ordinarily, one would’ve expected people to lend helping hands to the wounded and those trapped in the wreckage of the vehicle. But that wasn’t the case; they were instead busy taking pictures with their smartphones, sending and calling third parties narrating the scene of the accident in details!

Appalled at this lack of feelings, I went down on my knees, held the hand of one of the wounded passengers and consoled him to hold on that help is on the way. All he could do was to nod his head. I then appealed to a young man – who was among those taking pictures – to assist in getting leaves to cover the faces of the dead to at least give them dignity.

A while later, officials of the Federal Road Safety Corp (FRSC) arrive the scene and took charge, but not before I seized the opportunity to speak to the young man who assisted me on why I think it is morally wrong to take pictures of the dead and send out without respect for their dignity.

If the dead could speak, they would scream at us for violating their dignity by posting pictures of their battered remains on social media. They would remind us that it is inhuman, uncharitable and irreligious to disrespect them that way. And for most African cultures, it is an abomination to treat the dead with such disrespect and lack of reverence.

There are reasons why cultures around the world have very dignified and respectful ceremonies, customs and traditions around the remains of a dead person. These are not by accident. The way we treat the dead, is often a picture of the way we treat the living. When we fail to respect the dead, sooner or later, that lack of dignity and respect will find its way to the living. Little wonder some publicly run morgues around the country, and their treatment of the remains of the dead is a tell-tale and pointer to the treatment of the living.

When Diana Princess of Wales died in an auto accident in France, one of the first paparazzi to get to the scene took some pictures and thought he would be an instant millionaire when he sells the pictures to media outfits. But he got the shock of his life when the media unanimously refused to buy or publish the picture because they felt it was not dignifying to do so. An Italian magazine later used the pictures years later.

I recall an incident at the Lagos State University Teaching Hospital (LASUTH) morgue after the Dana plane crash two years ago. The attendants took their time to appeal to people present – including journalists – not to take pictures because of the nature of the corpses. I found it quite unfortunate when people started arguing that it was their “right” to take whatever pictures they so desire. The attendants stood their grounds and had to result to fisticuffs to ensure that smartphones and cameras were not used when people came to claim their dead.

It is instructive to note that when we put up the picture of the dead on social media – especially the mutilated ones, – we actually give some of the social media outfits the right to trade these pictures to third party companies. I was shocked when I saw the way the pictures of some nuns and young men who died in auto accidents were treated, and commented on, on social media.

This, to me, is an indictment not only on the individuals that uploaded such pictures, but also those that accommodated them on their sites and the social media outfits that hosted and harboured them. It portrayed them as insensitive, unconscionable, unethical and willing to go to any length to “drive traffic” to their sites. Would they have done that if those involved were their relatives? I doubt they would.

This is the downside of smartphones. Someone sent a joke to me recently saying a drowning child is more likely to drown today than before because potential rescuers will rather reach for their smart phones and busy their fingers taking pictures of the incident to update their status on social media rather than lifting a finger to help. How true this is, though sent out as a joke in our social-media-smartphone crazy world.

The Sept. 23, 2013 murder that took place on a San Francisco train is a classic example of this behaviour. On that day, in a crowded car, a man pulls a pistol from his jacket; raises the gun, pointing it across the aisle, before tucking it back against his side. He draws it out several more times, once using the hand holding the gun to wipe his nose. Dozens of passengers stood and sat just feet away — but none reacted. Their eyes were focused on smartphones and tablets until the gunman fires a bullet into the back of a San Francisco State student getting off the train!

The incident – which was captured on CCTV and later shown on cable news channels – is a powerful example of the unique change that public space has suffered in the age of hand-held computing. There are thousands of similar stories, less tragic, more common, that together sound the alarm for a new understanding of public space – that we should take our eyes once in a while from our phones and tablets and look at our surrounding.

Beyond this, people tend to spend more time on their smartphone than socialising with others; this destroys relationships according to experts. Nowadays, people spend most of their time on their smartphones while driving, walking or even working. This is how technology is affecting our lives in a rapidly changing world.

There is no doubt that smartphones has made our lives a lot easier. Smartphones allow us to communicate with people easily, learn new things, use applications that make our life simpler, and even develop our businesses. Also, there are many examples of smartphones applications that make our life simpler such as maps, weather and other vital apps.

Analysing the other side of smartphone usage, the urban theorist, Malcolm McCullough, writes that: “Never has distraction had such capacity to become total. Enclosed in cars, often in headphones, seldom in places where encounters are left to chance, often opting out of face-to-face meetings, and ever pursuing and being pursued by designed experiences, post-modern post urban city dwellers don’t become dulled into retreat from public life; they grow up that way. The challenge is to reconnect.”

Some are taking drastic measures to “whip people into line.” I read a story where the host of a dinner party collects phones at the door to force people “to connect.” In the same story, partners at a law firm maintain a no-device policy at meetings and each day, a fleet of vans assembles outside New York’s high schools, offering, for a small price, to store students’ smartphones during the day. In situations where politeness and concentration are expected, backlash may soon mount against our smartphones.