I apologize for misinterpreting, and I admit that my frustration with our industry probably colored how I read your post. To be clear I'm not saying smartphones should go in the trash and we should go back to pagers, I'm just saying that there's a lot of power here, lots of sharks in the water, and we all have monkey brains.

But to your point - who creates this environment, or what incentives are there for creating a less antisocial environment? I don't think collective willpower exists; there are only incentives. The ball may be in our court as creators, but due to the prevailing incentives, we've chosen to use the ball to extract as much as we can from every little piece of everyone's life. And such a powerful tool allows for efficient extraction!