Smartphone zombie

The Day After Tomorrow

Elsewhere in the narrative I described my Fire Man arriving home after midnight to find his wife in bed afflicted with two varieties of stupor. She is in a trance, a condition so withdrawn as to resemble catatonia, compounded of equal parts liquor and a small Seashell thimble-radio tucked in her ear. The Seashell croons and murmurs its music and commercials and private little melodramas for her alone. The room is silent. The husband cannot even try to guess the communion between Seashell and wife. Awakening her is not unlike applying shock to a cataleptic.

I thought I was writing a story of prediction, describing a world that might evolve in four or five decades. But only a month ago, in Beverly Hills one night, a husband and wife passed me, walking their dog. I stood staring after them, absolutely stunned. The woman held in one hand a small cigarette-package-sized radio, its antenna quivering. From this sprang tiny copper wires which ended in a dainty cone plugged into her right ear. There she was, oblivious to man and dog, listening to far winds and whispers and soap-opera cries, sleepwalking, helped up and down curbs by a husband who might just as well not have been there. This was not science fiction. This was a new fact in our changing society.

Ray Bradbury writing about Fahrenheit 451 in 1953

A smartphone zombie (German: smombie) is a pedestrian who walks slowly and without attention to their surroundings because they are focussed upon their smartphone. This is now a significant safety hazard as distracted pedestrians cause accidents. Cities such as Chongqing and Antwerp have introduced special lanes for smartphone users to help direct and manage them.

In 2014, China had over 5 hundred million smartphone users and more than half of them have a phone addiction. In Chongqing, the government built a cellphone sidewalk, separating the phone users and the non-cell phone users. In Hong Kong, they are called dai tau juk (the head-down tribe).

Texting pedestrians may trip over curbs, walk out in front of cars and bump into other walkers. The field of vision of a smartphone user is estimated to be just 5% of a normal pedestrian's. An app which uses the phone's camera to make it seem transparent can be used to provide some warning of hazards. In Augsburg and Cologne, ground-level traffic lights embedded in the pavement have been introduced so that they are more visible to preoccupied pedestrians.

Gallery

• Smartphone Zombies.png
• Texting in the crosswalk.jpg
• Blonde woman with tattoos texting on street.jpg
• Flickr - Duncan~ - Mansion House.jpg

See also

• mobile phone overuse
• pedestrian etiquette
• zombie walk