jim wrote:You use a computer for navigation? Good lord. People are missing the world they live in with their noses buried in their electronic gizmos.
Yeah, my nose is in my phone. That's how I hear the next turn. I use my nose.
Also, try driving in Boston. Streets intersect themselves, stop and start in different parts of the city going in completely different directions, and switch which one-way is allowed as you go from block to block.
I was kidding you about the navigation, although personally i do not use them. I have used them, in general I find them nothing but frustrating, but will say I have used them to my benefit (in Ireland for example). I have driven in Boston, and could imagine where they would come in handy.
As far as people being overly dependent on their devices, I stand by that. There is nothing more pathetic looking than a person hunched over their laptop. If you have meetings like I do at work, where nobody pays attention to the speaking humanoid and everyone is concentrating on who knows what in their computers, take a scan around the room. It's quite a sight.
Practically speaking, I think society would be healthier if we all carried
at least a minimal bias against adopting the newest gadgets. Then,
only when a certain threshold of need was exceeded would we go ahead and
buy.
jim wrote:If you have meetings like I do at work, where nobody pays attention to the speaking humanoid and everyone is concentrating on who knows what in their computers, take a scan around the room. It's quite a sight.
You say that like it's a bad thing. Computers and phones are the best thing to happen to meetings.
Fat_Bulldog wrote:When people are walking through a busy store, sidewalk, event looking down at their phone and they are in my path, they get shoulder checked.
That is awesome, and needs to be documented on YouTube (so I don't have to make the effort to go outside and see it).
Yes, these communication technologies help us to
bridge distances and keep in touch — but for this very reason they
contribute crucially to the centrifugal tendencies of society. For
example, the tools enabling distributed work groups to coordinate their
efforts are the same tools that made the far-flung distribution of work
possible in the first place and that will encourage its further dispersion
in the future.
I have my usual objection to this sort of argument. Why are we blaming the technology itself instead of the people and social institutions that create it and determine how it's used? Distributed work groups may be enabled by communications technology, but they are implemented because work is controlled through a capitalist system that drives relentlessly for cost reduction and sees the flexibility to hire wherever as a way to hold down wages. This seems like a pretty odd argument for why we should have less cell phones.
Actually, my impression is that the latest trend in business seems to be reversing this sort of wide dispersion of work groups due to some recognition of the value of physical proximity to productivity. Witness, for example, the end of work from home at Yahoo. Also, my company just reorganized itself physically, putting people working on the same projects next to each other instead of distributing them more or less randomly. Seems like this sort of thing should be obvious, but apparently the hidden costs (even to the bottom line) of such arrangements are becoming noticeable even to bean counters.
Practically speaking, I think society would be healthier if we all carried
at least a minimal bias against adopting the newest gadgets. Then,
only when a certain threshold of need was exceeded would we go ahead and
buy.
