Ethics and the iPhone

As an avid Apple fan and user, the launch of the iPhone has received my attention. No, I will not be rushing to buy an iPhone. I find myself in ample agreement with Dr. Bruce Weinstein's excellent article for Business Week entitled "Ethics and the iPhone."

"Our society has devolved into a mass of turned-on, tuned-out, and plugged-in technophiles. Whatever distinction used to exist between public and private life is all but gone, as one can witness on any city street, bus, plane, or shopping mall. Waiting in line at the grocery store or post office used to mean striking up a conversation with the person in front of you. It now involves blurting the intimate details of one's love life into a cell phone for all to hear or scrolling through a playlist for just the right song, or surfing the Web for something we want but don't really need."

Dr. Weinstein calls this new type of behavior, "iSolation." He makes good points. I remember the days of actually talking with people while waiting in a line for a sporting event. There was a sense of community, which has been lost due to everyone being wireless. The shallowness of modern culture is a valid concern. Of equal concern is the loss of time to think (cf. Phil 4:8).

"When our brains are constantly stimulated by electronic data, they are, of necessity, precluded from taking anything else in, such as the random thoughts that can be the genesis of great ideas. The nonstop avalanche of images and sounds from electronic media (among other distractions) is a barrier, not a portal, to creativity."