Posted on 08/08/2015 4:05:43 AM PDT by HomerBohn
I watched a four car rear ender that wasn’t a rear ender until the fourth car plowed into the third car. The officer who came greeted the offending driver cheerily, “...and how’s the kids?” No fault was determined.
“Twenty years ago is considered very recent?”
To those of us who were born during WWII it is very recent indeed.
“No telex, no fax?”
For home phone service in the days of Southern Bell there was nothing but voice. I saw my first fax machine on the USS Saratoga and repaired it in 1964 but it was many years later before fax machines were used in business offices, let alone homes. Telex was around long ago but that has nothing to do with what that article was about, you didn’t see telex in homes or automobiles.
“A young person actually told you that? Sorry that sounds
made up.”
Can’t help how it sounds to you but yes, more than one young person has actually told me that and I have heard it said many times about younger people by people fifty or older who have observed what passes for communication these days.
You can believe what you want to, I don’t really care but if you think there is not a huge difference between the phone service of even twenty or thirty years ago and today when many people almost never use the phone for voice communication you are very mistaken and there is almost no comparison between today and fifty years ago. I actually agree with you that there was a lot of overstatement in that article but there is something going on which prompted someone to write that article. Are you old enough to have any memory of the days before cell phones? Do you know what the term “party line” refers to?
To tell the truth I am beginning to feel something I could only call technological overload, I grew up in a shack a mile off the two lane blacktop with only a radio to bring in any information from the outside world, no telephone in the house until my mother got a phone when I went off to boot camp so I could let her know I was okay now and then. She didn’t want to be limited to letters. We had no TV until I was ten years old. Now we have cable TV, multiple computers, cell phones etc. and I find myself dreaming of spending some time somewhere with none of that.
And that's just one example.
I took a break and pondered this, and can see your point.
I don’t totally agree but I do see your point. I just
don’t think all of that is any big deal.
“To those of us who were born during WWII it is very recent indeed.”
The first time I voted was for Reagen.
While pondering this I came to the conclusion that even if
it were possible for cell phones to be a danger to
“Humankind” (definition, human beings collectively; the human race.)
then that danger would be offset simply by the
access of 911 and the lives that alone has saved. Your getting
up there, we both are, a cell phone just might save our
lives.
Maybe, maybe not. When they cut the Basal Cell Carcinoma out of my face it was on the side where I used to hold the phone, about halfway between the chin and ear. Now I use the speaker and still won’t talk while driving, period.
That can’t be right. None of them are taking selfies, and about half would still be on board.
Me, too.
I hate those blue tooth ear thingies, too.
I can't say how many times I have said "Hi" back to find someone was jabbering on one of those little units.
There was a time people walking along apparently carrying on a conversation with no one in particular would have been committed. Now you don't know whether to just avoid them or if they are really talking to someone.
Maybe, but those teenagers weren't jabbering on the phone or texting while they were driving, either.
I wonder how many people who 'dial' someone have actually used phones with a dial on them?
Jack of all things....master of none.
“Maybe, but those teenagers weren’t jabbering on the phone or texting while they were driving, either.”
Yea I her you but is it really dangerous to humankind?
As dangerous as homosexuality? As dangerous as liberalism?
The article is bunk, not to say anything bad about HomerBohn
though it was a good post. To make fun of.
I find that superior to spending four days in the water being eaten by sharks but what do I know.
It seems dangerous to spelling. I have read more gibberish posted by someone 'writing' on a cell phone with autocomplete than posted by idiots typing in earnest.
As for:
As dangerous as homosexuality? As dangerous as liberalism?
Yes, every bit.
It is the tool by which such things (ideas) propagate.
With the proper software (Facebook, for one) the harridan gossip of the back yard fence can now travel to multiple outposts at light speed. Such allegations can literally go 'round the world twice before the truth gets off the back step.
Liberalism loves its unfounded allegations, lies, distortions, and has long been the tribe of smearing the opposition before they can defend or even shed light on the truth.
The smart phone, texting, Facebook, and other such media are perfect for such distributions, including, but not limited to, flash mobs, cyber bullying, wrecking the reputation of your high school age daughter (even though she was sitting next to you working on her homework when the alleged behaviour occurred), not to mention distracting pedestrians from traffic and the motoring population from the task at hand--driving the effing car.
Perhaps you see some bonus in that, some eugenic gain in purifying the species, but those eliminated might be valuable members of society who become collateral damage of such a war on situational awareness.
Not every person I have seen in the last year on a phone was driving like an idiot (some were walking like one), but every person I have seen driving like an idiot was on a phone.
That said, like any technology, in the proper setting it is wonderful. Who knows, some day someone may have their diseased appendix removed in a remote location in time to save their life because someone could be guided (between selfies) through the operation, provided the battery doesn't give out first.
In the meantime, the things we used to learn, the things we might need to know some day, we now relegate to the machine, left idling in the cloud--the great repository of human knowledge, in the assumption that the server won't be down, the battery will last and that we will have the bandwidth we need to access it when we need it. Why learn anything but how to work the new model of phone?
SOS
Wow. You take everything you said and apply to it that there
is an exact and equal opposite it’s really not that bad.
For example:
“The smart phone, texting, Facebook, and other such media are perfect for such distributions”
Distribution would not be limited to just one side. The Mormans
are using this tech to the limit and they are growing.
But the most glaring examples of all are the historic reactions
to previous breakthroughs in technology. People were
saying
pretty much the same thing about television and radio.
Go back and look at alternating current all the way
to good ol Rock and Roll and it’s been one threat to
humankind after another. I’ll tell you this, the next
step in this is probably going to be something along the
lines of computer implants or neural tapping.
I would have to agree that there are changes
in our social behaviors but this cell phone craze is just
the step before the next “disaster to humanity”. It’s not
going to stop because it’s what generates wealth. We could
go on and on tossing theories around but in the end I think
in the near future we’ll look back and say “ compared to this crap, smart phones weren’t nothing”.
As for the next step being the neural net, you have no objections to your movements, communications, inquiries, research, being tracked? Enjoy your neural implant. Maybe, Citizen, someday they will identify the patterns or even thoughts which indicate you are a thought criminal.
But every child from conception will believe in Anthropogenic Global Warming, The "war on women", and the evils of the white man even if they are one. They will be programmed from birth, the information will be controlled, and anyone who even thinks of being a heretic and suggesting other than the official version will be rounded up, or perhaps, just shorted out.
The totalitarian potential is incredible! Far beyond just snooping every communication from grocery lists to purchasing patterns to people movements and associations to implied thought.
If you think government isn't ridiculously invasive now, just wait until it can plot the aroma and consistency of your bowel movements, your food intake, hydration levels (not to mention consumption of whatever you consume). The little voice in your head will remind you you have consumed more than your monthly allotment of red meat, and even if you killed and cooked it over a fire, will cause you to be immobilized while the proper authorities respond and collect you for reprogramming.
You seem to think this fragile construct is the wave of the future. If you are correct, I am glad I am a great grandfather.
With the Apple Watch, I looked at my wife and mentioned, "Dick Tracy finally got his wrist radio."
Sure, people are making money. Need I say, there are always people who make money selling people rope to hang themselves?
But the people making money aren't creating wealth, they are middlemen eating the markup, whatever they can entice the market to bear. They are importing all this crap from China at a fraction of the retail price, and making a killing in the controlled release of the next 'big thing', milking the sheep through every minor upgrade and version, creating a market for the 'connected', most of whom spend time laboriously informing their circle of minutiae and trivia, at the 'newest, lowest rate'--and milking the taxpayer for the ones distributed to those who get welfare.
Someone is making a killing, and even if you are frugal in your own life, you still get to pay for other people's.
Do we taxpayers pick up the 22% in taxes and Federal access fees for the Obamaphones, too?
And if you aren't trendy, were mugged (and your widget stolen), in an accident, a natural disaster, all you have to do is go to the nearest payphone and call for help, right? What payphone?
If there are bystanders, they'll be busy taking video to upload to their Facebook or YouTube, so don't expect them to intervene on your behalf.
That is what this is coming to.
When you make the presentation that will make/break your company and some competitor has hacked your neural net, just imagine how focused you will be with all that screaming in your auditory nerves--because you will be the only one in the room who can hear it.
And when the tornado/blizzard/hurricane comes through town and the network is 'unavailable', what will they do? Sit at the Superdome? They won't even be able to look up how to start a fire, much less be able to gossip about everything with their widget.
I may take a different vision, but I don't see these devices as freeing mankind, rather, they are the electronic chains which will guarantee a slavery more insidious than could be previously imagined.
And if you think Government employees watching porn is something now, just wait until the government can tap into your most intimate moments...and has 300,000,000 channels to choose from. Maybe by then, the net won't just tap into hearing speech, and sight, but all the senses.
But someone will be making money...right?
And for those who won't play along, it shouldn't take much to manipulate a mob to go kill them. The media can do that now with television and a little editing--just imagine knowing every 'hot button' to agitate every individual because you can intimately monitor their biometric response to stimuli and analyze what set that off (actually, in theory, that could be done now, just not with the precision a direct link would provide).
That data could be used to distract most effectively at critical moments, but why do that when someone's automobile can be hacked and driven into opposing traffic or a fixed object?
If it sounds like science fiction, maybe, and maybe not.
The one thing no technology really can change is human nature. That something will be abused or misused by some is a given, and often to gain or retain power over others for fun and profit.
Cell phone with unlimited talk, text, and data: $30
DSL high speed internet: $27
Land line (needed for DSL): $35
No cable or satellite. Regular TV with additional neat channels such as Me-TV, Decades, Antenna-TV, and four PBS stations: Zero dollars
Total: $92/month
Let’s see, 3 and 4 are outright lies. 5 is the natural progression of technology in the market place. And 6 and 7 are silly paranoia. And I don’t even like cellphones.
I live in the sticks and none of those low cost cell phones work.
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