Folding the paper, scrolling the screen

There was a sole newspaper sitting on the cafe bench on Saturday morning. It looked barely touched—still holding those crisp, familiar folds from when it was first pulled from its plastic wrapping. It sat there abandoned, a relic in the morning light, while around me, the cafe hummed with a different kind of silence. Everyone else was glued to their screens, scrolling through news or whatever else occupied their digital lives. It’s hard to know what they were looking at, really.

I was planning to travel down to Wollongong to record an episode of The Limb Shift, and I’ve realised how much I love these trips into nearby regions. Whether it is heading north through the Hawkesbury or slipping south to Wollongong through the beautiful, dense forests around Waterfall, the journey itself is a reward.

On the train ride home yesterday, my attention was caught by a couple—likely in their mid-to-late 70s—sitting opposite me. They were immersed in a physical copy of the Sydney Morning Herald.

It instantly transported me back to years of my own weekends, sitting with friends in a cafe, spreading the sections across the table, trading pages, and settling into a routine that lasted for hours.

I don’t consume the papers that way anymore. While I still maintain a subscription to the Herald, I read the digital replica format on my tablet, early in the morning, usually by myself. I do appreciate that curated, page-by-page view, but there was something profoundly refreshing about seeing that couple on the train. They held such serious expressions, clearly absorbed in the weight of the day’s headlines, while I, if I’m honest, am often more inclined toward the trivial.

It highlighted a growing frustration of mine: how tethered we have become to our devices at the expense of the world around us. It is remarkable—and frankly alarming—how many people walk through life with their heads tilted downward. In my own neighbourhood, I constantly see people crossing busy streets while fixated on their screens, never even glancing up to check for traffic.

As someone who uses a mobility scooter, this hits close to home. It is immensely frustrating to have people walk straight into me, only to offer a mumbled, “Sorry, I didn’t see you there.” Well, perhaps if you weren’t looking at your phone while crossing the road, I think to myself, though I rarely say it aloud. Maybe I should.

Earlier this week on the light rail, I saw someone reading a physical book, and it struck me again how rare that sight has become. Like newspapers, I’ve moved to a tablet, but there was a lovely, tactile quality to seeing what someone else was engaging with.

When someone is buried in a phone or tablet, they are a closed book; you have no way of knowing what has captured their imagination. A physical book, or a newspaper, invites a shared, communal experience. It offers a tiny, welcome window into the world around us—and that, I think, is exactly what we are missing.