Originally published on metropolis.co.jp on September 2010

Illustration by Shane Busato

I have an awful confession to make. More than once during the past few months, I’ve been seized by an urge to deliver a resounding thwack to a passerby—to commit an unprovoked and quite random act of violence against a total stranger.

I should state for the record that I’m not an aggressive person, either. Although a childhood diet of Schwarzenegger films has blessed me with the ability to unleash all kinds of imaginative destruction in my head, the carnage has never leaked out into the real world. (The limitations of my puny physique would make it tough to deliver a meaningful blow to an opponent even if I wanted to, but that’s another discussion for another day.)

So what’s pushed me to the edge? It’s that thing that you carry with you everywhere: that attention-sapping succubus that lurks in your handbag or pocket, mewling for a quick play. I’ve got one too, and I’m apt to check it furtively at numerous points in the day, sometimes ignoring everything around me in order to have a good fiddle.

Now, I don’t have an ingrained prejudice against cellphones. I’d be a total hypocrite if I did: aside from a brief period of abstinence during my university years after my handsets kept getting filched, I’ve spent my entire adult life suckling on the teat of mobile telephony. I resisted getting an iPhone for ages, and prayed to the heavens that I’d hate it when I did. I don’t: it’s a bloody marvel.

But that didn’t excuse the guy cycling in front of me the other day on Ome-Kaido—a four-lane road frequented by commuters, buses and truck drivers that hardly seemed like the ideal place to be skimming through your iTunes library. Yet there he was, mid-pedal, eyes locked on the screen as he hurtled down the street. The urge to thwack was overwhelming, but I let it pass and rode on, confident in the knowledge that eventually something much larger and heavier was probably going to do the job for me.

It’s perverse that we’d label as “smart” a gadget which is capable of reducing its users to a state of such slack-jawed stupidity. Just watch somebody sending an email on an iPhone: it requires total absorption. The multiplying depths and complexities of the technology have sucked us in yet deeper, making casual use pretty much impossible. I could fire off text messages on my old clamshell keitai without breaking eye contact with the person I was talking to, but that simply isn’t an option anymore.

The problem arises when we forget about this—when we attempt to interface with our gadgets while continuing to interact with the world around us. It’s amazing how often you see it: people storming through rush-hour crowds, boarding trains, driving cars, chopping wood (OK, maybe not) while gazing raptly at their screens, tapping away. I’m amazed, too, at how many times I’ve done it myself. It’s a drip-drip thing, and once you’ve got away with behaving like a plonker once, you’ll probably keep doing it.

I’m sure there’s a technical solution to this: a buzzer or flashing light which goes off when the device, God knows how, detects that you’re being a bit of a twit and alerts you to impending danger. Having a stern-faced avatar pop up in the corner of the screen every now and then—a digital likeness of Renho, perhaps—could help shake users out of their mobile rapture. But I’d like to propose another, more old-school, solution.

In zazen meditation, an acolyte who begins to doze or lose concentration is rapped with a light stick, known variously as a kyosaku or keisaku. It’s not a punishment, more a way of keeping you alert and returning you to a state of mindfulness. And as we plunge deeper into digital distraction, it’s this exact state that I fear we’re losing.

So let’s restore some balance. Let’s send armies of stern, stick-toting monks out onto the streets and station platforms of the city. Where attentions are wandering, let them bring focus. Where the real world is being ignored, let them put eyes back on the ball. And where people are wielding iPhones like idiots, let them bring thwacks.