Dead to the World Around Them

When I was as young as the lad to our left, I walked the streets of Olneyville, my nose buried in a book, oblivious to all but the occasional blare of horns waking me from my contemplation. Today, as Wayne Curtis writes in The Smart Set, the eyes of digital zombies are fixed on screens, not paper pages, but the risks of collateral damage remain the same. "From time to time, they will glance up and a brief squall of confusion will cross their faces as they try to reorient themselves. ... They wander into streets and traffic as if no cars or other hazards exist in their parallel universe." The hazards of substituting texting for reading ― or conversation, for that matter ― is a subject for another time.