The modern urban environment is attractive to many: whether it is a rural resident, a migrant or a person born in the city. Each of them meets the challenges of the modern city and brings something innovative. Forms of social life emerge and develop in the materially real and socially imagined context of cities. A. Lefebvre pointed out that this is due to a constant and contradictory process, which is permeated with politics and ideology, creation and destruction, the interaction of knowledge, space and power.
Significant changes are taking place in the social reality of the 21st century. They are conditioned by the inclusion of new information technologies in social processes. Ultimately, the social interaction of people changes. This is noticeable in the process of perceiving the environment by a person and transmitting / receiving information. One of the aspects of modern human life has become a device thanks to which we embrace time and space - a smartphone.
With the help of sociological imagination, using the term CR Mills, we will try to discern life-changing social practices. In this article, the main task is to study the role of walking and determine its meaning in the era of active smartphone use.
When information at a certain historical period becomes the main resource for each member of society, it becomes necessary to differentiate activities in time. The acceleration of the pace of life and the amount of information received not only from the real world around us, but also from a smartphone, is exerting strong pressure. The organization of personal time creates the need for interdependence and generates new social rhythms. N. Ellias believed that rhythm means the expression of a huge number of superimposed networks in which it involves social functions, and the competitive pressure in which it pushes every action from within dense and comprehensive networks. If earlier the social circle of people allowed thinking and being alone with oneself for self-reflection, now leisure is transformed into loneliness with a smartphone in hand.
The denser network of interdependencies, which involves the progressive differentiation of functions of the individual, the larger the field on which the network is distributed, giving it a functional and institutional unity, the b of lshie loss of individual bears due to spontaneous outbursts of emotion ... How is it possible to characterize the connections built through a smartphone? What can be a time of the first rhythm? In this context, the smartphone refers to us to the idea of speed, connection and liberation from physical space as a sign of modern luxury.
A digital city within the framework of pervasive computing , in particular a smartphone, gives an impulse to social liberation due to hypercommunicability, that is, the number of communication channels increases. Questions arise: how does the function of a walk change and its significance in the daily practice of an individual.
The modern city dweller leaves anthropological experience aside, associating himself with loneliness, autonomy and wasted time. Walking as one of the experiences, on the contrary, strengthens social ties and affirms the importance of the individual in his social circle, offers the boundaries of communication.
Benjamin's flanneur, walking around the city in search of something unexpected and new, is becoming a thing of the past. Public spaces are losing their flair and are no longer sufficient to fill the life of a city dweller. Most city dwellers are more likely to go to the most advertised establishments, signaling their preference for other establishments.
A person wants to be a part of the events that are taking place, but he is lost at the thought that some of them depend on his own will. Thus, according to F. Fukuyama, society turns into a crowd of lonely people. Recent generations are losing family values and regretting it. They need freedom to divorce and also the friendliness of low-priced family stores. Modern city dwellers are haunted by benefits that do not imply emotional charging.
F. Jarrizh pointed out that criticism of modern technologization is directed not only at the abstract concept itself, but at such developmental trajectories that become part of social practices, opening and closing certain opportunities. Disagreement with technical changes is not based on abandoning the technology itself. On the contrary, it is expressed in opposition to the social and political order by which technology is determined. In other words, it is a struggle against total dependence on technology (“el tecnofatalismo”), which imposes the adoption of an automatic attitude of innovation.
Smartphone use is changing forms of social life that increase the number of social relationships. The possibility of endless connection (“always on”) at the same time requires resistance to stay away from virtual communication. With the advent of the smartphone, such phenomena as “fear of missing out”, “Phone Snubbing”, “Nomophobia” (No Mobile Phone Phobia) are emerging.
Walking as a way of (re) creation and being face to face with the outside world is transformed into a different form of accompanying and observing the world through a smartphone.
M. Berman notes:
Modern man must be nervous. If he is something, then he should be nervous. At the beginning of the last century, while walking, listening was equated with touching - the ability to hear helped a person navigate in space, which ensured safety on the road. On the streets of a modern city, a city dweller has to fence off the unbearable noise of the streets. He is distracted by something that belongs only to him - a smartphone.
The first work on the study of walking was undertaken in the 19th century by W. Hazlitt and GD Thoreau. L.P. Farg and F. Gessel talked about mixing urban and rural surroundings. R. Solnit offers a modern vision of how we represent the phenomenon of walking from the point of view of reflection on the process itself.
In his work "Getting Started" W. Hazlitt suggests that at the beginning of a lonely walk the fundamental question becomes: "What will we find at the end of the journey?" According to the author, we are in for inner excitement and / or anxiety. When we take a walk, we will rather hear an inner voice if we are alone with ourselves. As, for example, walking around the city, Miss Dalloway, the heroine of the book of the same name by W. Woolf, hardly notices passers-by. She now and then dives into the past, and the London landscapes turn into a patterned landscape of her own thoughts. GD Toro, in his essay "Walking", mentioned an anecdote where a traveler asked the maid William Wordsworth, one of the most avid hikers on foot, to show his work. The girl pointed to one of the rooms and replied: "This is his library, and his office is nature."
In the space of urban culture, architecture as a metric and order of cultural space sets clear outer boundaries of contemplation and action. The walk is based on the aesthetic experience of distant and closeness, their harmonious combination in the dimensional movement of a person. We meet intimacy beyond what is near. M. Heidegger writes:
In this century, under the influence of mass production and consumerism, satiety is at the core. The pace of life has increased due to the amount of information, but life has become more boring (rituals have appeared, for example, scrolling the news feeds at breakfast or on the way to work, through which interest is shown, but the content is hardly remembered). At the end of the 19th century, boredom was hidden behind observation. Walter Benjamin described the European flâneur as follows:
In the 21st century, suffering from internal devastation, a city dweller decorates his own soul not with images of his native place or memories, but with images seen on a smartphone screen. The speed of life is perceived as an abstract process that becomes visible only from a few details of the urban landscape (building, sidewalk, gate). It turns out that the smartphone stimulates live perception - stimuli increase and at the same time the desire to act decreases. Reality and our spatial perception are transformed into a theatrical skits, where "close proximity" is reproduced, following the terminology of the German philosopher R. Safranski.
A century ago, R. Walser discovered a new way of interrelations with the world, when an infinite and unique diversity of the counter appears through the routine.
In this century, this new way is to travel through the smartphone screen.
With the emergence of multitasking due to the high flow of information and the accelerated pace of life, there is a basis for tougher self-discipline. Maxim B. Franklin's "time is money" is quite appropriate. Time has become an intangible capital and now the smartphone embraces all useful social actions and connections, becoming the epicenter of human life. However, the German sociologist and cultural theorist of South Korean origin Byun-chol Han believes that there is still no acceleration, there is asynchronization, since the temporal dispersion deprives the likelihood of any rhythm. Feelings of restlessness and ephemerality refer us to automated time: “El espacio de la red no se transita paseando, caminando omarchando, sino surfeando o explorando. Estas formas de movimiento no tienen dirección. No siguen ningúncamino ”ⓘ“ Web space does not imply any leisurely stroll, it rather offers daring surfing or discovery. Shapes like this do not represent any hint of direction. There is no path here ”- lane. the author.
The process of accelerating the pace of life implies the importance of absorbing more of its episodes in an increasingly shorter period of time. In this perspective, we consider communication via a smartphone that feeds on time. The abundance of the media landscape in the palm of the city dweller shatters attention into countless stimuli that give a sense of the acceleration of time. At the same time, there is a kind of imitation of "zapping" (constant switching from one program to another while watching TV) as a form of time perception. Real time and the constant transmission of information from the smartphone screen lead to the derealization of urban space - the dissolution of the most important and more real space in favor of fragmentation and disconnection from meaningful reality. During the traveling, walks or hikes in the mountains are accompanied by a smartphone to which attention is constantly drawn. In this context, it turns out that the smartphone fragments our cognitive abilities and destroys mindfulness. Constantly using the smartphone, we cease to see.
M. Castells, studying the problems of social order and power and based on the analysis of the works of M. Weber, R. Park and other classics of sociology, deduced the key characteristics of new forms of urban life: size, density and heterogeneity ... Density enhances differentiation. Due to the limited space, urban dwellers are closer to each other, which increases the need to distance themselves from each other. The population of the city becomes indifferent to the environment if it is not related to the achievement of individual goals.
By becoming impartial to others, at the same time, individuals experience influences that contribute to loneliness. J. Twenge believes that American teens who use mobile devices for more than three hours have a 35% higher risk of suicide than those who sit in them for less than one hour a day. The risk of suicide rises to 71% among those teenagers who use social networks for more than 5 hours a day. In addition, children "living in gadgets" are at increased risk of developing depression.
A walk makes things proportionate in a person's life to his step and physical strength. The walk focuses on the experience of real movement and the aesthetics of perception in dynamics. Rhythm plays an important role in the walk - it determines the rhythm of the thought process, and the path traveled stimulates or reflects thoughts during the walk. This effect creates a consonance between the inner and outer pathways that create an intimate relationship.
It is enough to go outside and look at the architectural details, read the emotions on the faces of passers-by. Collecting moments, as Kierkegaard did. However, wandering around with the dictionary is by no means possible.
A walk implies the presence and / or development of self-reflection, the ability to retire with oneself. H. Arendt notes that if we lose the ability to be alone, then we lose the ability to think. And, as a result, we run the risk of staying in the crowd and being "swept away". For her, freedom is tied to the private sphere (“vita contemplativa”) and the social and political sphere (“vita activa”). H. Arendt pointed out that freedom implies something more than the ability of a person to act in public spontaneously and creatively. It is also the ability to think and make judgments in private, when loneliness gives a person the opportunity to reflect on their actions and develop a conscience, avoiding the cacophony of the crowd - in order to finally hear their own thoughts.
Can we be alone, allowing ourselves to respond to emails and chat? When we reply to messages, the illusion is created that his sender is nearby and we are in front of us what we want to be. We become eyewitnesses of the events taking place in world society through the smartphone screen. We can treat them coldly, or we can make them a part of our life.
We do not pay attention to the environment that the body feels when moving around the city. It rather copies this movement seen on a smartphone screen: we are going to take pictures in a cafe, seen in someone's toblog, and not enjoy the taste of aromatic coffee. If a walk lives in a territory, which limits communication, like the time of social action itself, then the smartphone expands these boundaries - the conversation stretches for days. We are in continuous contact with the outside world, forgetting to look inside, and this is the main role of the walk.
