Задача по теме: "Понимание информации в тексте"

Texting or just being rude? 

Everyone’s addiction to cell phones, iPods and computers had been my pet peeve on campus. I had ranted and raved for hours about friends who'd text message while talking to me, students playing on the internet during class and classmates who failed to thank me for holding a door as  they chat on cell phones.

But as I sat in class conversing with a classmate last Thursday, I realised I was not so different from those I had scolded. While speaking to a classmate, I impulsively reached into my bag, pulled out my cell phone and began text messaging with an old friend. As my finger hovered over the send button, it hit me. I have been throwing stones, while inside a glass house. I was that friend text messaging someone else mid-conversation. In that moment, my pet peeve turned into the realization that technology has made us all, myself included, unconsciously rude. 

Walking on the campus it is nearly impossible to find students disconnected from technology. Everywhere you look, they are talking, texting or tweeting from their cell phones. There are students with ear buds snug in their ears and an iPod concealed in a pocket, purse or backpack. 

Collectively, we do not disconnect ourselves long enough to say, “thank you” or “you’re welcome” when a door is held open for us, “excuse me” when we bump into others in the hall, or “bless you” when someone sneezes. We have all become too technologically involved for the most common or courtesies. 

I come from a small ... well... cramped, high school (263 students in my senior class). Even there, “thank yous,” “you’re welcomes” and other pleasantries were few and far between, though before and during school hours we were limited on our technology use. This provided me with an interesting perspective. Within this small, tight community of high-schoolers in a rural town, I noticed that if someone were to hold the door open, it was uncommon to hear someone even utter the two magic words.  

However, if you bump into me, I’m sure to laugh, and I predict the bumper would as well — not out of rudeness, but because before technology people read books, finished up homework or wrote essays on the way to class. The only difference is our books are smaller and have tiny buttons. When two students bump into each other, it’s almost a secret handshake saying, “Hey, what’s up? Yeah, I know how you feel, I’m just as busy, too.” Perhaps there is no sudden pandemic of rudeness, but something that’s always been there.

Instead of talking to new people, we choose to text message our old friends, tweet our social networks “friends” or search the web.We choose to encapsulate ourselves in the protective bubble of technology. And from within this bubble it is completely acceptable to be rude. Apparently, the new “acceptable” is to be physically hanging out with one person while being a chatty Cathy on your cellphone. I mean do people think it makes them look cool or “in demand” by constantly shooting back and forth with others? It truly gets on my nerves. Is this really the world we live in now? Two people can’t just sit in time and space together and have one-on-one time?   

I can no longer maintain this pet peeve I have also fallen under. It would be much more fun to continue ranting and raving about my friends who never stop texting, my classmates who caused a ban on laptops or the “thanks yous” never received. Instead, I will be too busy picking up the pieces of my own glass house adjusting to what is around me.