They are everywhere in the world.  If you could look at it from space it might look like those swarms of birds migrating north or south, with choreography set to Pachelbel's Cannon.  They are gaggles or posses, hoards, mobs, swarms or...well I call them Mobile Oblivions.  They block narrow sidewalks, gather at intersections.  Oblivious to their surroundings.  (* see note below)

I think the first place I was aware of mobile oblivions was in Japan where they would gather in circles as though they were Wiccans but with Parisian fashion sensibilities, conducting an incantation.  A sacred circle.  Texting each other while brushing shoulders.  Imagine.  The signal goes to outer space and returns to travel less than a foot.  I guess its a good thing mobile devices aren't powered by fossil fuels (well they are but that's another story...)

Innumerable times I've had to get off the sidewalk and walk on 4-8 lane roads, taking my life into my hands,  just to get around them.  If I were struck by a Tuk Tuk I'm sure they wouldn't see any connection between their behavior and why I just sprouted wings.

Will there be someday when no one is present in the present?  The mobile Oblivions will have to hire guides to lead them through crowds with signs maybe:  Road Runner Oblivion 445 coming through. That way the Oblivions wouldn't have to notice their surroundings.  Or maybe the next generation of GPS will guide the gaggles and we will have invisible force fields and bounce off each other like bubbles.

We move around more and more through time than space.  Its like when you fly across the country in the center row.  If you don't see anything from take off to landing, what's the difference?  You are at point A then hours later you are at point B. Nothing much has changed around you, especially if you are plugged into an iPod or watching a movie.  You eat, drink, and you are in a new place.  Compare your own, or at least Mobile oblivion's survival skills compared to our ancestors who lived along side saber tooth tigers or more current and poignant imagine being in Iraq or Afghanistan or any war.  Compare the part of you taken up by spatial awareness in the two realities.  We need to know less and less about our surroundings in order to survive.  And we assume we learn less from random encounters around us then what is being relayed from a satellite from another place.  And extend that changing field of attention one level up and it gets to one part of why we are killing the planet.  We don't know what it takes to survive in any particular place.  What the place has to tell us is more and more invisible or seems unnecessary for our survival. If by magic our mobile oblivion gang disappeared and the infrastructure all disappeared, leaving us just with the naked landscape how long would we survive?

* I should note that Individuals can be just as oblivious, stopping abruptly to make a point, "no he didn't..or I can't believe it or...who else is going...or whatever..."