On Thursday, May 17th of this year, I visited the Museum of Design on Ausstellungsstrasse in Zurich. In front of the museum there is a spacious square with benches and a fountain. A class of perhaps forty young people has just come out of the museum and is gathering in the square; two teachers are with them. And I see with horror: all of them, without exception, all of the students and the two teachers are staring at their smartphones with a hypnotized look. No conversations, no jokes, no flirting or eye contact between the young people. For almost twenty minutes before a school bus picks them up. Smartphone slaves of the twenty-one generation.
The next morning I wake up in a Zurich uae rcs data hotel and go into the breakfast room. It is well attended; everyone is silent. Of course, in the morning you read the newspapers and leave the person sitting opposite you alone. Newspapers? No one is reading a newspaper at a single table. And my question to the waiter about a daily newspaper is met with surprise. He says he has to ask at reception whether they still have such things. Later: No, they don't have any newspapers anymore, but I could get a tablet computer. And then, like the other guests, I would stare at the table, just past the plate where smartphones or tablets and often laptops are lying. This is not the twenty-something generation sitting here. This is the well-off older cell phone slave.