Werner Herzog’s documentary about the dangers of texting while driving is right on one level and wrong on another…
It’s right to point out that texting is not at all compatible with the attention-consuming activity of driving, but it’s wrong to suggest (by tone and mood) that something is inherently (even morally) wrong with texting as a practice. Texting is not something like Heidegger’s verfallen—being’s fall into everydayness, into chatter, into banter, into mindlessness. Texting is as rich and meaningful as any other form of human communication. Indeed, because driving can be such a waste of time (sitting, waiting, burning fossils), it is better to liberate the journey by taking an open place on a bus or train and in this freedom text/email/surf with no abandon, with no danger to yourself and others. The individual will always be locked in the car. There is no way out of it. Only on public transportation can one combine the need to travel with the need to perform the defining human activity, linguistic communication.
