Cell-phone Nation

I 'll start by using the favourite line of a very good friend.

"Maybe it's just me being weird"

Yes maybe it is just me but then maybe I am not and it's just (part of) the rest of the world going nuts. Here is the story that triggered all this questioning.

Yesterday I was watching the news on Spanish TV. Pavarotti's death was -of course- among the first. The "Maestro" was the one who put opera back into the radio station play-lists, exposed younger audiences to "serious" music and -alongside Carreras and Domingo- liberated football funs from being characterized as un-cultured idiots, through the famous 3 Tenors concerts at the World Cups of 1990, 1994 and 1998.

But it was not the news, or the covering of the story. It was the behaviour of the people themselves, the so-called funs of Pavarotti, or simply his fellow citizens of Modena, standing outside his house, waiting for the car to go out carrying him to his last residence. Then finally the car appeared out of the garage and started its slow process through the stone-paved streets of Modena. A moment supposed to be dedicated to grief and respect to the "Maestro". But instead of the (appropriate?) silence or the last applause, all the people could think of was to take out their cellphones, lift them up high enough above the crowd's protruding heads and try to take the best shot/video of the event. It really shocked me. These people were supposedly there to say the last goodbye (or the next to last, since they can also attend the funeral) and instead of that they were taking cell-phone photos of what? The black limo carrying Pavarotti's casket?

It looks that all this technology, cell-phones, e-mails, voice-mails, video-mails and "mails from the other side" in general, has changed not only our lives but also the way we think about a lot of stuff. And the new way is NOT thinking about a lot of stuff. We have come to admiring sunny beaches through digital cameras, whispering to our lovers through skype and listening to music through ringtones. We miss half of the concerts to take photos and videotape the funeral of a legend.

Perhaps it's just me being weird, but the day may be close when news will be only RSS feeds, friends will be only met on facebook and all we 'll be reading will be our stupid blogs.