slaves to technology

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That's a bit over the top, khaoz. It's not about the device itself. It's the communicatioin that it facilitates.

What is wrong with at least pretending to acknowledge the existence of people who are in front of us in the present moment and dealing with this email, voicemail and texting in private. Discretion. There are a whole parcel of human beings who drag out their devices and hide behind them doing these things in the presence of others specifically as a shield so they dont have to deal with what is in front of them. It is not necessary to stand in the middle of the grocery aisle talking on a phone, or punching the buttons, completely oblivious to the reality of people waiting to get beyond the point the texter is standing in. It is not necessary to sit in the car at a stop light doing things on a cellular device, oblivious to everything going on around us. It is rude to be walking around a place of business, or in a movie theater or restaurant in the midst of humanity, engaging in personal, mindless anything. It is simply rude, inconsiderate and thoughtless, unless it is an emergency, which 95% of the time it is not. I will say it again. People anymore just do not care. No sense of....But this is all a waste of syllables. We have dissolved into a culture of simple, self absorbed apathy.

I actually don't like cell phones. Most of the calls that I have received in my life have been negative, and, as a result, I have developed a pavlovian dread of all incoming phone calls. I still use them, of course, but If the technology disappeared tomorrow, my quality of life would improve immeasurably.

Re Khaoz, I can't speak to why everyone else uses their devices, but I use them so I can get more reading in (audio & text). It just makes the down time when I'm on my way to some where more productive and enjoyable, and at the same time it keeps anxiety at bay since I can block out irrelevant social information.

Last edited by Stannis on 23 May 2014, 7:25 pm, edited 3 times in total.

But talking on a device is real! As real as the people standing next to you.

I don't know; why don't you tell me since you brought it up? No one on this thread has stated or implied that anything is wrong with that.


Yes, there are. I remember people used to do this on the bus to university so they didn't have to listen to inane conversations about other students getting shit-faced drunk over the weekend. Do you consider that to be a problem? If not, you might want to specify which sort of instances of technology shields you actually consider to be a problem, rather than relying on this generality.


No one has said or implied that any of this is necessary, so what are you even addressing with these statements? You started this thread because you found the behavior unacceptable in some way...what does necessity have to do with it? You're right, this behavior isn't necessary...but that doesn't in any way buttress your argument that it's unacceptable. It isn't necessary to eat peanut butter sandwiches for lunch...will you therefore complain about that, too?


Texting and e-mailing are mindless? Compared to passively watching a movie, which is also a "personal" pursuit, right along with patronising restaurants?

Why should smart phone users think about other people's distaste for smart phone use if the former aren't preventing the latter from doing what they want to do? What do they need to consider if all they are doing is sitting somewhere and reading or tapping on their phone? If they are with other people who want their attention, sure, that's inconsiderate, but you seem to be generalizing that to all smart phone use, including people in public, alone, quietly using smart phones for reasons that you could not possibly be aware of. You apparently think that smart phones are an inferior form of communication to in-person communication, but you've given no reason why. If technologically-aided communication is inferior, then all the nonverbal and sometimes-nonverbal people, autistic or otherwise, who rely on technological communication are communicating in an inferior fashion. Do you accept that implication of your position?

Communicating with people suggests self-absorption to you? Also...whoa with that huge generalization. People use their smart phones more than you think they should...so we've dissolved into a culture of simple, self-absorbed apathy? People don't care...about what, exactly? I'm sure you can see the connection between those things in your mind, but the steps of reasoning from one to the other aren't at all clear to me.

the point is people are engaged with their doohickeys and not with their fellow humans beside them every day.

I think the OP also meant that people in general these days basically worship their cell-phones.

pretty close to it- at least until the next better smarter shinier thing comes along.

Thank you for your summation. People wrapped up in punching buttons on a phone are not "in the moment".

and they also contribute to a chilling of civil society by withdrawing their positive attention from other humans in the flesh, we seem to be a much colder society than we were 40 years ago before all these personal electronics. it seems people don't talk f2f to one another anymore.

And this article also makes the point.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/ ... oment.html

we collectively are trading analog memory for digital.

All the evils of the world will be history once the Robot Overlords take over!

I hope a big ol' asteroid hits Elysium.

But the Robot Overlords are unbiased and fair. They treat ALL like crap. No one is favoured unfairly.

socialism administered by robots, what a life.