“This is it. This is what matters. The experience of a product.”

These are the opening words of Apple’s heartstring-tugging “Designed In California” commercial. Read them to yourself a few times. Then wonder why someone inside the company didn’t insist upon this copy edit:

“This is it. This is what matters. The experience of a person.”

Watch the ad closely for me. As we’re told that products are what matter, we see a series of shots in which people actively turn away from life to engage with their technology.

A woman closes her eyes on the subway to soak in electronic music.

A room of students looks down at their desks instead of at their teacher.

A parent and child cuddle, focused on a screen that’s so powerful it illuminates the kid’s face.

A couple kisses in the rain, then immediately turn away to look at a phone.

A tourist opts to FaceTime instead of bathing in visceral, smoky yakitori.

In what should be a warm, humanizing montage, people are constantly directing their attention away from one another and the real, panoramic world to soak in pixels. They’re choosing the experience of their products over the experience of other people several times in quick succession. And Apple has a warm voice in the background, goading us on.

This is a crazy world. Please tell me you see it, too.

Our gadgets are designed to constantly lure us back into the four-inch world.

Now I’m not saying the ad isn’t representative of real human behavior. Indeed, since Apple changed the world with the iPhone’s multitouch screen, the fundamental interactions behind our gadgets are designed to constantly lure us back into the four-inch world, nudging us with vibration, push notifications, and impromptu xylophone solos to almost touch all of the people in our lives doing the same thing on another four-inch screen somewhere else.