Friday, August 09, 2013
Our technologically disoriented society
ABC News had an interesting segment a few nights back about the recent spike in pedestrians being killed by drivers. We usually blame the motorist but according to the report there are two primary reasons for more pedestrians getting killed. One is many of them the walkers that is are drunk and these fatalities often occur at night (Lindsay Lohan is ambidextrous in this regard, she's driven drunk and walked drunk). The other main reason is folks are walking while texting and not watching where they're going. I see this on a daily basis and not only that you're more likely to become a victim of crime imo while doing this. You're far less aware of your surroundings, your environment which is the first thing they teach you in self-defense courses. Say two black guys are following you, say two guys are following you they may want your wallet or they may even be after your smartphone. Anthony Weiner, alot of people miss the point here. It's not so much that he'd have sex with these women he's just addicted to the tweeting, the texting, the technology of it all. You know when you take a picture of something, say your cat or a birthday cake and you send it off into the wireless ether to wind up on Facebook or Twitter or even your blog? You're amazed at the technology of it all (I did that?) and you feel like you have some magical powers that folks 30 years ago didn't even have and so in some cases images of peckers are happily bouncing around between the cell phone towers. I also think people are paying far too much for their technological needs and not only that all this technology is making them exercise less, I mean how many things can you watch on your tablet? So that's it we're a nation of zombies:)
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Could be that electronic devices are addictive?
ReplyDeleteGives NSA something to do (and they have a ways to go to match what Google, Facebook et. al. know about ya)
But apparently there's some kind of relationship now between all these parties. I actually do think electronic devices are addictive, look at video games. Here's another way they're addictive, let's say you're having a bad day with your smartphone or tablet or laptop, technologically it's a frustrating day for you and so you spend the better part of that day trying to figure out what's wrong, why you can't do this or that with your device and meanwhile your personal life suffers, your relationships, your family. I honestly think Weiner not only has a sexual addiction but a technological one.
DeleteFrom Dr. Suzanne Phillips-
ReplyDelete"Cell-phone texting has become the preferred channel of basic communication between teens and their friends. One in three teens sends more than 100 text messages a day or 3000 texts a month.
Teens who use their cell phones to text are 42% more likely to sleep with their phones than teens who own phones but don’t text.
Texting is instantly gratifying and highly anxiety producing. Instant connection can create elation and self-value only to be replaced by the devastation of no response, a late response, the misinterpretation of a punctuation mark, a sexually harassing text, a text sent to the wrong person or a text that is later regretted.
Neuro-imaging has shown that back and forth texting floods the pleasure centers of the brain, the same area that lights up when using heroin. The emotional disruption of a real or perceived negative response, however, necessitates more texting to repair the mood, to fix the feelings of rejection, blame and disconnection. The addictive potential is obvious."
...businesses over use the stuff on constant and meaningless reporting, Wiki has become 'research' and blogging often tends to
confuse opinion with fact. Perhaps we grow dumber while the hardware grows smarter and speeds the time of the Singularity . Since I only have a landline, I will probably miss
the occasion. (No, Weiner hasn't called lately)
I was going to theorize that constant cell phone use actually does do something to brain chemistry and electronics but you just provided that there. Gosh I didn't know teens text that much!! Going to sleep with your cell I don't get that one either. I generally have my cell on during the day, I know it doesn't use alot of power when in the Standby Mode but then when I go home later I just turn it off to save power anyway and because then I have my landline.
DeleteTeens are always into peer fads. Remember streaking? I was at a
ReplyDeletecollege basket ball game and this naked kid streaked across the gym
floor right after the Star Spangled Banner. He got to the doors at
the end and they were locked.
Hey BB any cro-nuts where you are? Talk about a craze!
ReplyDeleteI sleep with the phone because it's my alarm clock. It has a 'bedside mode' where it doesn't give any message alerts or anything. Sometimes I forget it at home and that really does produce some anxiety, mostly because ever since getting it I have realized that without it, if something happens to me (like on the way to work over so many deserted roads) I have no way of getting help unless someone happens to come by and see me.
ReplyDeleteFrom what I've read you don't use your smartphone for trivial reasons. Recently had a case here in NY where some NYers woke up at 4 in the AM with an Amber Alert on their cells and everyone got annoyed at this and complained about it. I'm sorry but isn't a missing child more important? Sorry to inconvenience you.
DeleteNo, no cro-nuts here yet. We have Cro-Magnons and Neanderthals, though. Buffalo burgers too.
ReplyDeleteIt's a NY thing BB, started in Manhattan by an entrepreneurial French chef and some other places are copying but they have to call it different names for legal reasons. At Stew Leonard's for example the cro-nut is called the cro-do and is excellent btw with cinnamon and sugar on the top.
DeleteWill the world-wide audience of Facebook replace the privacy of the
ReplyDeleteconfessional ?
Hybrid cross between a donut and croissant? Reminds me of those hotdogs they serve at Orioles games: crème cheese, peanut butter and grape jelly. Our little corner of Idaho invented the bite size steak which is popular here but
has not spread more than a couple miles either way.
Word is NSA is using people's smartphones as homing beacons but not to worry, Obama says we're still not spying.
ReplyDeleteI think they do stat analysis: a sudden flurry of calls between
ReplyDeleteYonkers and Baghdad might indicate a plot. Same for Google, any references to cro-nuts in Idaho might indicate a lucrataive trend.
You worry about the gov't, I'll worry about BigBiz (and Soap will
worry about both)
If the Gov't must know I did download the Unrated version of Robin Thicke's video "Blurred Lines" to my new wifi tablet earlier today.
ReplyDeleteSounds really suspicious.
ReplyDeletewtf is a cronut?
ReplyDeleteBB if Carney ever leaves you'd be the perfect Obama spokesman, you and Shaw. Saty a cronut is a hybrid croissant/donut always deep-fried. Started by this Ansel guy in NYC it's the latest buzz in the bakery world.
ReplyDeleteWonder why he didn't call it a don-sant?
ReplyDeleteZ-Man, you are up and commenting early...you one of those that got
addicted to sleeping with your smartphone already?
I much preferred Bush's press secretary to his 'brain' Karl Rove.
ReplyDeleteI used to have a secret crush on Ari Fleischer. Not that I liked anything he had to say, it was more that he was just kinda cute in a totally not my kinda guy sort of way.
ReplyDeleteThen you should like Tucker Carlson.
DeleteOur old neighbors had a black cocker spaniel named Tucker.
ReplyDeleteYou're keeping me going bro, between 5-7 I had to recharge my battery.
ReplyDeleteI had to do a little investigation.
ReplyDeleteTucker Carlson looks like either a silver spoon first year medical resident who totally skated through school and doesn't know jack OR a chess team reject.
Ari rocks the older bald guy 'I'm powerful enough that I can be meek and mild about it like Phil Colson in the Avengers' vibe.
Neither of them is my type. My type is the white Hanes t shirt, dirty jeans, dirty workboots, knows how to build things, kinda rednecky looking but totally liberal once you get past the baseball cap kinda guy.
Oh yeah, and he smokes even though he knows it isn't good for you. Doesn't drink though.. no beer gut! but not a guy who works out, because work is hard enough. And not EVER EVER a guy who has more stuff in his closet than I do.
ReplyDeleteBB, Soap worries about neither.
ReplyDeleteBecause libertarians aren't really part of society. Don't you remember them going on about how the masses will get what 'they deserve'? Because what affects everyone in our society doesn't affect libertarians. They're the Scientologists of the political spectrum.
ReplyDeleteBB it's not just the gov't I'm concerned about, I'd probably agree with about half of what you say about Big Business. I'm not impressed with their business degrees when all they can come up with is suggestive selling for example which in my experience really only works a small percentage of the time. I don't like Big Business cutting everybody but the full-timers down to 29hours/wk. but then increasing their workload (no health insurance but you can work harder). I don't like the idea of a living wage being mandated by law however so on the subject of Big Biz I'm quite varied.
ReplyDeleteLibertarians/Anarchists are affected by what society as a whole chooses and decides. Society as a whole is affected by what it chooses and decides.
ReplyDeleteThe difference of course is that Libertarians/Anarchists don't sanction, endorse, condone, participate in the furtherance of force, coercion, intimidation, and aggression to achieve its ends.
Those who choose to cease participating in the political destruction are not culpable for the havoc which the political process brings.
DeleteEver think of writing a book? Call it "The Soapie Manifesto." I mean that as a compliment.
DeleteSome anarchists are pretty good at havoc .
ReplyDeleteThe link just directs me to the cbs homepage. The usual smash the windows, burn the cars crowd are not anarchists. True anarchists arrive at this point because they abhor the force, power, and control of the state. They don't in turn employ methods of force, control, etc. to achieve their ends.
DeleteOkay, I got the link to come up at work. A couple of things....
Delete"Although the group smashed windows, destroyed property and touched off a riot, its members are not clear about where they stand on violence. Some say they are a nonviolent group; others seem less certain."
"I consider...private property to be a form of violence," says Steven.
How? Why don't you elaborate? Why aren't you asked to elaborate?
"I consider the state to be a form of violence."
It is. It holds a legal monopoly on force.
"I don't think that destroying that which maintains violence to be violent."
And by employing violence you feed that which you abhor. You become a part of it just as the United States, in its incessant pursuit to pre-emptively squash out any and all semblance of terrorism around the world, becomes a terrorist organization.
"We reject the law," says Shelley.
If you reject the law then don't be one bit surprised when others do the same.
"The law was not decided by us."
The law exists. It is inherent in our existence. What wasn't decided by us were the regulations, the statutes, the ordinances and the varying degrees with which they'd be applied.
"We are being governed by a system that we do not agree with and we completely reject. Therefore the law means nothing."
If the law, that is justice, morality means nothing and in turn you choose to ignore the individual practice thereof then you cannot and will not ever live in a society which is void of the corruption and the destruction which you proclaim to abhor. Instead you feed it. You become a part of it.
The only thing you can change is yourself in the hopes that you will inspire others to do the same. It's the golden rule and it's quite simple.
There are anarchists and there are thug/vandals hiding behind the name. It seems most any viewpoint group has their violent fringe..
ReplyDeleteKKK, Black Panthers, PETA, the armed Posse Comitatus etc. IMO while the viewpoint may have its validity, the violent factions tend to discredit the ideals.
There's a hilarious scene involving the KKK in Django Unchained, only Quentin Tarantino can pull it off and probably a younger Mel Brooks.
ReplyDeleteHad a door-to-door salesman stop by the other night selling 'home
ReplyDeleteelectronic security'. Electric eye beams, sirens, flashing lights
and a convenient hand-held thing which controlled the house from
anywhere in the US. Told him that if I ever figured out the TV
VCR/DVR I'd give him a call. *geeez*
What if the convenient hand-held thing turns on the stove by accident?
ReplyDelete"...the violent factions tend to discredit the ideals."
ReplyDeleteWhich is why Obama's drone strikes and warmongering should trump whatever semblance of good might be perceived from his healthcare initiatives.
But that's the thing about what I call pragmatic liberalism, as long as people get their liberal social programs they don't care about the other stuff. NSA reading our e-mails? hey we got our welfare.
DeleteI call it cognitive dissonance.
DeleteJoe Blow doesn't care, he's got his free cell phone from the government and...hey the thought occured to me, get something free and there's usually some strings attached (like loss of liberty/privacy). Anyway Joe Blow's done with Celebrity Apprentice so he's gonna grind in his bed now to a porno.
DeleteDrones; the latest in a long sordid foreign policy run by spooks .
ReplyDeleteCertain world populations hate us and they have their violent factions as well. There is some merit in leaving and letting things run their course, but the downside can sometimes be less than humanitarian..genocides in central Africa, armed gangs in
Somolia (even Doctors Without Borders had to pull out) and the
El Quaida ops. IMO, better to deal with them with drones than put
US soldiers into the mess. Remember, they left Hitler alone until
it was too late.
Well that's one thing that's always turned me off to the libertarians despite their domestic pluses, they turn an indifferent eye to the world's genocides and other government-sanctioned massacres. To my knowledge Rand Paul would do nothing militarily to help oust al-Assad despite killing his own people and it's all from the Pat Buchanan school of thought.
Delete"[Libertarians] they turn an indifferent eye to the world's genocides and other government-sanctioned massacres."
ReplyDeleteActually, libertarians are quite vocal about government sanctioned massacres (including those perpetrated by the United States).
& I honestly don't think they'd go to war or intervene militarily if we had another Hitler and he was rounding Jews up all over again in concentration camps.
DeleteTech annoyances - I'm not getting the marketing strategy on those pesky popups when you're online, to annoy potential customers?
ReplyDeleteMarketing strategy: constant overkill, outrageous claims. I'm not
ReplyDeleteaffected in my purchasing, but I DO appreciate ads like the "Cash-
779 Right Now" operetta, State Farms 'What are you wearing, Jake
from state farm? and some of those Geico ads. Gotta admire folks that don't take themselves too seriously, ya know? Then, the pill
ads where the side effects are far worse than just not taking the
pill. Marketing-the show biz of big biz.
I had a tablet session ruined because of constant porno popups and literally left with a headache and also you're slowly wasting battery power. Hey marketing genius like maybe I'm in a public library!
ReplyDeleteI use Windows7 internet explorer. It has a pop-up blocker option.
ReplyDeleteI want my next phone to be a windows phone and hopefully it will sync with my windows 8 apps on my laptop.
ReplyDeleteThen you have to research the problem instead of just enjoying your browsing time. I pretty much came up with what BB just said.
ReplyDeleteWas talking to oldest daughter today; me on the landline and she on her smart phone. Guess which one crapped out?
ReplyDeleteYou know it's funny whenever I call my friend on my landline his side of things always seems to break up and he's the one with the cell. Then I call him back or he calls me back and he goes "can you hear me now?" like the guy on that commercial.
DeleteSo when are we gonna get 5G LTE?
ReplyDeleteSooner than we should. I'd wait around a couple more years for
ReplyDelete9G (shortly after the 'singularity'....
We always gotta have more. I love that Onion article Gillette just came out with a new razor WITH TEN FUCKING BLADES!
ReplyDelete10? Sounds like Edward Scissorhands.
ReplyDeleteI'm a 3 blade person myself. Hate it when you have to go to work early and you look like you just shaved with a chainsaw.
ReplyDeleteI'm a modernist; electric shaver. I sorta thought folks with the
ReplyDeleterazor blades mostly used them for prepping their crack.
Lately I've been thinking of going back to the Norelco.
ReplyDeleteThey even have them at the hardware store .
ReplyDeleteFuckin' dumb hicks.
ReplyDeleteWish I still had my 1986 Dell with its primitive mouseless MS-DOS
ReplyDeleteoperating system....
Pretty much the only thing they'll find on my tablet are music videos.
ReplyDeleteIs it possible the NSA electronic database is overcome by music
ReplyDeletevideos snitched from an unknowing music-loving public?
Not to mention their vast stashes of porn they must have by now.
ReplyDelete'Technologically disoriented..'
ReplyDeleteMy wife and another lady were down south in Boise this weekend for
a retired educator conference. The older lady had a GPS-computer
equipped car, and since it was lunch time, she typed in restaurant.
The GPS recommended the fast burger place 'In & Out' three miles
up the interstate. It talked them through the exercise: 2 miles
after the next over pass, 1 mile ahead, 1/2 mile...exit right,
now. They came up to a highway headed across the desert to the south, but nothing else...so they checked the GPS computer. "In &
Out, Salt Lake City, 349 miles ahead."
I've never used it myself and would probably find it a distraction. Prefer to get lost the old-fashioned way.
ReplyDeleteMy phone has saved me a few times when I've gotten lost. I'm not entirely fond of Bing Maps as it seems to be less than user-friendly but I was grateful to get to my car appointment on time after they moved to a new location and didn't tell me.
ReplyDeleteI have a brother-in-law, a contractor, who only buys new pickups with manual roll down windows. His rationale is driving along rivers on ice: he wants to make sure he can egress. Another guy,
ReplyDeletesort of an odd libertarian, only buys trucks that are so old that
they have no seatbelts. I'm thinking his rationale is 'If God wanted us to have seatbelts, we'd be born with 'em. My bitch:
no pipe ashtrays in the Ram 1500s any more: gotta galvanized coffee cup glued to a plastic plate sitting on the floor...
What's this new thing now with the latest model cars they come with the headlights are always turned on when people drive them like you'll be driving along on a nice sunny day say by the Bear Mtn. Bridge and you'll see like four or five sporadic cars with their lights turned on. I don't know how this is Progress.
ReplyDeleteBecause it makes them more visible. The Taco is old enough that it doesn't have daytime running lights but they really do become helpful when it's one of those days.
ReplyDeleteBut my only point is it should be an option and second you must burn out more lights.
DeleteThey load cars down with everything anymore, there are really very few things that are optional, because people just expect that they ought to come all tricked out. So that's what they do. It's like impossible to find cars that ARENT loaded anymore, because people just won't buy them that way. So the companies take the short cut, load them down and then all that's left to choose is a powertrain and interior/exterior colors. Everything else is included.
ReplyDeleteFor me decent cupholders are mandatory.
ReplyDeleteI am a big fan of minimalist, utility transportation. I drove a Wrangler for ten years and if that's not minimalist I don't know what is. Nowadays they're pretty fluffy but mine was the old style and of course me being the brute I am I beat it into pieces; it had no carpets, no back seat, sometimes no passenger seat, quite often no doors and I drove it for two years straight (in all weathers) with no top. It had no 'heat' to speak of and even if the radio worked you can't hear it with no top on. It was a fantastic vehicle and we never had a bit of trouble with it. He made me sell it when gas hit $3 a gallon because basically, you know, it's a pig.
ReplyDeleteMy Taco is as stripped down as it gets, it has power nothing, not even windows. I like it very much and I've put so far 120K on it and I would like to keep it for another 120. The only thing I wish it had was Bluetooth, and that's really just for safety reasons (it isn't easy to shift, drive, turn and hold that phone too). It worries me to think about the vehicle I will someday be forced to get that will only be available with an automatic transmission (I have never owned one of these), navi, backup cameras, anti theft stuff, all kinds of power things and I am just not going to know what to do. I used to entertain fantasies about getting a (military surplus not commercial mass produced) Humvee, actually before they started mass producing Hummers, and somewhere back in my mind is the eternal conundrum of how do I get, register and insure something like a Unimoog? I am sure that when the time comes I'll end up with another Taco, but I might have to go with the 'work truck' configuration just so that I can keep things simple.
I believe Saty would be at home in a 1947 Dodge Powerwagon . I had a lab tech in Mpls who drove to work each
ReplyDeleteday in one. One day her sister dropped her off and I asked if her
'rig' was out of order. "Nope, hubby's plowing up the potato field today."
Oh hell yeah. That looks like something I could be totally cute in.
ReplyDeleteSubj: Technologically Disoriented Society-
ReplyDeleteLittle town up north of here evacuated an elementary school. A bomb threat naming specific teachers and certain rooms seemed real.
Nothing was found and the call was traced to Egypt. It is thought that the hoaxer looked up the school on the net, gathered info and
made the call.