Restaurateurs, hairstylists and friends and family of the unpunctual have suspected it for several years. Now research is providing some evidence: as cellphones have become more prevalent, with more than half of Americans now wireless, so too has lateness. Phones have enabled more people to fall behind schedule, and have provided a new crutch for the chronically tardy.
“I don’t know how my friends stayed my friends before I had a cellphone,” David Goldin said.
Researchers who study the effect of cellphones on society talk of a nation living in “soft time” — a bubble in which expectations of where and when to meet shift constantly because people expect others to be constantly reachable. Eight-thirty is still 8 o’clock as long as your voice arrives on time — or even a few minutes after — to advise that you will not be wherever you are supposed to be at the appointed hour.
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The investigators at Context-Based Research concluded that the United States has become more like Brazil, where time has been spongy for generations. (In Brazil, on the other hand, people who used to just arrive late now complain that they have to call and explain.)
“The cellphone is positioned as something making you more spontaneous, more efficient,” said Robbie Blinkoff, the principal anthropologist at the firm. “If you turn that on its head, it’s also about allowing you to be more lazy.”
El resultado es que algunos restaurantes empiezan a negarse a sentar a grupos que esperan a alguien para estar completos, o sencillamente a aceptar reservas. Otras formas en las que las nuevas tecnolog