• After 15+ years, we've made a big change: Android Forums is now Early Bird Club. Learn more here.

Interesting rant on smartphones

zuben el genub

zuben el genub

Extreme Android User
Smartphones: Transforming society into a sea of stupid | ZDNet

Asimov had this already - Solaria

He is also assuming too much. I will be taking a walk and pull out my phone - but I'm birdwatching and I have Audubon's Birds and Ibird pro on the phone. No worse than using a book like most birders. I look up the species and play its calls to identify the bird.
I have apps for flowers, trees, mushrooms, weeds, and clouds.

I enjoy nature much more when I know what I am looking at.
 
There is something exciting about receiving an alert on my phone. It's just too enticing not to check. I've since turned off audible alerts for my social media apps as those are not something that I feel need to interrupt what I am currently doing. I only have alerts for direct messages like email, SMS, and other messaging apps.

I still socialise as much as I did before phones. It's just that with the information age and internet, I've been able to converse with more people who share common interests with me. I must say that there are many topics that do no interest people I actually know and see on a daily or weekly basis. My phone and PC enables me to connect with them.

With so many more people that everyone can connect with on their phone, there is more demand for people's attention. Before, when say sitting at the dinner table, you only interacted with others around the same table. If the conversation becomes stale for you (and it does happen), all you could do before was just sit there bored. Now, you can check your phone to do something about that boredom. Yeah, many people consider it rude. Certainly social protocol and etiquette demand you do not turn your attention away. Perhaps changing the subject may help in such situations.

I must admit that all this technology offers so many distractions in almost any situation. As long as I am engaged fully with the people I am in the company of, I won't be looking to act upon any potential distraction. However, a break in the conversation or whatever social activity I am enaged in allows for a quick check of my phone. It's almost instinctive now. I see friends do the same as well. It seems that this behaviour amongst my friends and family with smartphones do not cause any stir and is becoming a social norm amongst this group of friends.

I certainly don't mind my friends checking their phones occasionally. It seems that the people who do complain about this phone checking behaviour are those who don't have a smartphone. Times are changing and social behaviour changes as well. Before getting my smartphone, I would also consider this behaviour rude. I can understand where people feel such behaviour is rude. I've since moved with the times as well as many of my friends with smartphones. The times they are a changing and will continue as to change as technology advance.
 
He's a pretentious and narrow-minded plonker. This says it all:

I'm having a hard time believing that Facebook, Instagram, Vine, or Twitter are high-value experiences compared to, say, email or a voice-over-IP (VoIP) or video conferencing session between colleagues or distant family members.
Click to expand...
The "value" of the experience is determined solely by the person(s) experiencing it. Nobody elses' opinion matters.

It seems to me like Mr Perlow needs to take his own advice, "get out more" and have some fun instead of assuming that life is serious business. ;)
 
I have 2 ringtones I will answer immediately (both family), and a third one I can assign to the vet in case of a sick pet.

Anyone else can wait. The phone is there for my convenience and not for society's.

All the nature apps are self contained. Sitting on a rock in the middle of nowhere, I might identify a cloud, plant, rock, but after that, it's commune and enjoy nature.
Besides which, where I did that in the past, there was NO phone connection for any carrier.
 
I too have the Audubon bird app and follow a local birding Yahoo site. I bust my phone out to see what I'm seeing and check where to go next when in the birding mood. And I'm not the only one doing so! It's nice to be able to update others immediately and to have a positive ID.
I also have a special ringer for my son and you can bet your bottom dollar I'm answering when he calls!
 
I agree with some of his sentiments, but the guy is a moron.

Once we decide collectively as a society what is socially acceptable to do, there's no turning back.
Click to expand...

So I guess we still have slavery, right? I guess we still give lobotomies[1], right? I guess a woman's place is still in the home, right? All of these were once socially acceptable.

[1] Go read the Wikipedia article on Rosemary Kennedy (sister of JFK, RFK and Ted). Utterly barbaric.

I'm a software developer, so I definitely like me some technology. But I've got my limits. I hate texting as a substitute for conversation. My wife doesn't get it: we've had fights about me not texting her enough. I tell her texting is having a (poor, since I can't type all that well and am a perfectionist with words) conversation with a piece of silicon, glass and plastic. She thinks I'm ignoring her. I sometimes wish I worked in the 60's where few people even had a desk phone at work.

I'm a textbook introvert. 10 years ago when I would go out with friends, I was the quiet one because that's the way I am. Now, ironically, even my most extroverted of friends are the quiet ones, because they're fiddle-effing with their phones non-stop.
 
I wont deny that some people are addicted and too reliant on their phone, but that article felt bias and a bit extreme.
 
For me tech and nature go hand in hoof, I took countless photos of my deer friends with various phones. It didn't disrupt any flow whatsoever. Even helps keep me sane. At work, say some hunter dude comes in chatting about the Gorey details of his last kill. Instead of telling him off and possibly having us lose a customer, I just turn on Play Music and amp up my headphones to drown him out. Everyone wins.
 
Ain't the presence of technology, it's what they do with it.

Who wants some idiot hooking up a special camera in a restroom?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom