Based on the ideas in Walden, how would Thoreau most likely feel about recent advances in technology, such as cell phones?

We will always have difficulties in presuming to speak for people who lived in a different time period, and in predicting how they would react if they suddenly showed up in ours. Nevertheless, from statements Henry David Thoreau made in Walden and in his other writings, we can offer suggestions about how he might react to some of our developments.

Thoreau witnessed the changes that came about as western civilization was moving from an agricultural society to an industrial one. Even so, he wasn’t opposed to new technologies across the board. In the “Sounds” chapter of Walden, he writes passionately about the intrusion of the Fitchburg Railroad line that runs alongside the pond. The train is an “iron horse” that makes “the hills echo with his snot like thunder, shaking the earth with his feet, and breathing fire and smoke from his nostrils.” And yet, he can see the value of this new technology. He sees the commercial value in being able to quickly transport goods from the countryside to the city and vice versa. For the rest of his life, he himself used the railroad frequently to travel, mostly around New England, in order to give lectures, to run errands, and to continue his natural explorations.

In the “Economy” chapter, he makes a telling comment about the invention of the telegraph, the precursor to the telephone:

Our inventions are wont to be pretty toys, which distract our attention from serious things. They are but improved means to an unimproved end, an end which it was already but too easy to arrive at; as railroads lead to Boston or New York. We are in great haste to construct a magnetic telegraph from Maine to Texas; but Maine and Texas, it may be, have nothing important to communicate.

He could easily say the same thing about cell phone usage today. Does anyone have anything truly important to communicate? I believe he would be especially disturbed by people using cell phones loudly in public, for no good reason other than to touch base with someone they know. Thoreau was most likely an introvert. He spent a lot of time thinking and writing on his own. He disliked large gatherings, banal conversations, and the telling of gossip. For someone to intrude on his space with only half of a two-way conversation and with nothing important to say would probably have been an intolerable situation to him.

Thoreau loved to walk in natural areas and to study plants and animals. He sometimes allowed a friend to accompany him, but he was picky about this. He didn’t like his companions to talk much during these walks. He didn’t even like it when he walked and had other thoughts running through his own head. In his essay called “Walking,” he writes:

I am alarmed when it happens that I have walked a mile into the woods bodily, without getting there in spirit. In my afternoon walk I would fain forget all my morning occupations and my obligations to society. But it sometimes happens that I cannot easily shake off the village. The thought of some work will run in my head and I am not where my body is – I am out of my senses. In my walks I would fain return to my senses.  What business have I in the woods, if I am thinking of something out of the woods?

Certainly he would not have wanted a call on a cell phone to jolt him out of his walks and natural explorations of what he considered sacred spaces. Nor would he have welcomed the sound of anyone else’s calls and conversations. He may have appreciated the convenience of portability and the value of a cell phone in an emergency. But for constant use? No. The evidence does not support this.