No mobile zombies

If television and summer are difficult to reconcile, extremely poor and repetitive schedules, suffocating heat and the desire to be outdoors, the screens of mobile phones, increasingly large, defined and performing, are now constantly on and active in every place and in every situation and are heavily transforming the habits and methods of interaction between individuals, to the point of changing their posture.

Like hunchbacked zombies, totally alien to their surroundings and solely focused on the magic box that they hold in their fingers like a relic, the children of digital technology seem to reject the world in its most conventional form of relationships , words, gestures and looks to experience a surrogate and artificial version, filtered and revisited, compressed and remodulated according to one's needs and expectations of the moment. It goes without saying that in this parallel universe everything is simpler and more within reach, here one can live in complete digital anonymity as in the spotlight of the infinite telematic square without ever needing to reveal oneself in one's real physicality, without the skin contact of a hug or of a slap, without a kiss.

Just look around to understand how this new world has taken possession of the real one up to replacing it, the simulacrum of reality has become reality itself with the tacit consent of parents and grandparents who happily deliver their children and grandchildren to this form of virtual existence where everyone, in solitude, lives like a little hero but, at the moment of confrontation with the real and uncontrollable world, stumbles and capitulates at the first obstacle waiting for the punctual help of "mammà". Then it happens that one day in August you get on a plane and you find yourself on holiday in Greece, not party islands invaded by millenial tourists, but the classic one: Delphi, Meteora, Thessaloniki, Athens passing through the magnificent and unknown arrangement of the tomb of Philip the Macedonian (father of Alexander the Great) and immediately you realize you live in a different reality, no annoying ringtone to accompany your journey, no zombie hunched over on your cell phone, but a flood of young people who work, especially employed in the tourism sector, be careful, prepared and, above all happy…

A real revolution for our standards. Polite, always with a big smile that shines on their faces, available and able to speak at least two foreign languages with an impeccable accent and pronunciation, they are the encouraging picture of a nation who has hit rock bottom and known poverty to be reborn stronger and more motivated than before; there is certainly no wish to retrace the same road to see Italy and the Italians regain contact with reality but it is a thought that, I must confess, has touched my mind. By the way, following and zapping on local channels as I always do for a living, I lingered on the commercial breaks... more eternal than here, in one of these I counted the passage of 42 commercials together... not even one on telephony, Internet and cell phones !!! Does that mean something?


Michelangelo Dotta
NP October 2022