A friend was getting the roof tiled on his house, 4 hours after starting, he called the company boss and told him to take the phones off his workmen, or take his workmen off the job. If I ever go out for a meal with anyone and they phone meddle, I leave.
Brexit, for once some facts.
- Thread starter flecc
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At the monthly meetings of a voluntary organisation I belong to we started to suffer this at meetings, several of the dozen committee members engrossed in their phones and not following, keeping track of what was being said and being planned.
In the end a couple of us who weren't yet brain dead protested about this and now no phones are seen during meetings unless a reference on the 'net is being sought for the meeting's use.
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It’s quite incredible when you look around in any public place, a cafe, restaurant, bus queue etc, at the number of people using smart phones, especially since they have only existed for about 25 years and been in the mainstream for 20 years at the most. It’s even more incredible that people didn’t really ask for them, we were more or less told that we needed them by IBM & Apple. Same with tablet computers.
I,ve been fortunate to visit some fantastic places over this year, it always amazes me the number of people ( not always the young) sit in hotels, on boats, on beach, in restaurants with their entire attention on a phone 90% of their time. Seems mad to me that folk spend such huge sums visiting these places but never lift their heads up to look at view..Its utter madness.
People will hire awful houses and yachts over good ones...to get WiFi connectivity. I often wonder why they bother leaving home but its obvious. Gives them something to post about. That's a serious comment. I,ve seen I happen. Their mates at home see more of place.
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Some of them, like me, are reading the news/current events. A smartphone takes up less room than reading a newspaper in a confined space, like a train or a bus. I suppose a few decades ago it was common place to see train passengers on their morning commute, with their heads buried in a "broadsheet".
Virtually anything you can do on a home computer you can do with these gadgets with the screen resolutions on current top of range models one can actually read newspapers without squinting view video and tv and then spend the rest of the time bad mouthing your travelling companions to you fellow friends on pedelecs.. . With the hunt and peck keyboards not great for your 're writing of war and peace but you could dash off a sonnet or two on the commute home..
.. come on get with the programme
Add to that that the audio output is better than the vast majority of hi fi systems when listened to by headphones in both recorded sound and live radio and they can store thousands of books and thousands of cds worth
They can give you your position to within metres and provide maps and directions oh they can sometimes be used to phone ...
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Life and the world around them is so scary they are hiding from it...
We don't have one and people keep asking "but how do you manage to meet up when you are out and about?", well we fix a meeting place and time beforehand, very complicated stuff!
Would you not also have experienced those wealthy yacht owners who never bother weighting anchor but spend their time in the clubhouse or the golfers ditto.
. Status and parading about are strong social forces.
Yep, but they are on their phones too. Never seen inside of a Golf club.
Dont get me wrong,modern phones are superb...but lots of us aren't coping with what they offer, especially the social media side. ( I have no facebook,twitter, tinder or any such thing. Just this and a sailing/ diving forum)
Similar to me, just this and the Natural History Museum forum.
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however, to play devils advocate, I've never had a concentration span of much more than ten minutes. even at uni I'd have to get up and do something different every twenty minutes or so when studying. and phones can complement an experience. being able to access Wikipedia to know one is looking at serotine bats that form matriarchal colonies (instead of say just a bat) can be enlightening. I find I can be as present with the freedom to use a phone as not, or at least have a choice, be able to switch it off
Thanks Steb, I've for some while been of the opinion that some form of attention deficit could be one reason why so many are continuously buried in their phone screens.
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I use Facebook and Twitter quite extensively and find both very useful. Both the cycling club and running club that I belong use these two social media platforms to communicate with members. For example, next Sunday morning’s ride has been published on there together with the meeting point / time and a .gpx file of the route to load into a cycling computer. If there is any deviation to the plan due to weather for instance, amendments can be suggested, discussed and acted upon, thus keeping all the members involved. It works really well.
On Boxing Day, someone posted on the running club Facebook page that the fancied going for a run at 4:00 pm. I had a bit of free time around then so we arranged a meet up point and ran together. Another person saw the post and joined us to make a group of three. I really like social media for this sort of thing.
I’m not really into announcing that I’ve just farted or scratched my @rse like a lot of social media users.
I don’t know if there is any truth in this, but it sounds plausible. I’ve heard it suggested that as humans, we need to be liked and thought of in favourable terms by others & also to be thought of as being successful, whatever successful means. In olden days the successful owned big houses, drove Ford Zodiacs and went on holiday on an aeroplane. Nowadays, young to middle aged people can’t afford big houses because all the selfish old people own them, cars have become more affordable and Ryanair have removed any dignity or respect that airline passengers once enjoyed. Because of this, the easiest way for people in the young to middle age bracket to outwardly display their “success” is to post their day to day routine on Social Media. Look at me drinking beer in a pub, now I’m eating a fish in a restaurant, I like Made in Chelsea on the telly etc. They get instant gratification and feedback in the form of their friends & followers giving them “likes” and I think that becomes addictive, hence their faces are always turned toward the screen fishing for likes and more gratification. It makes them feel successful and I think they believe that others will perceive them as being successful. It’s just a theory, but I think there is some truth in it. It’s all a bit shallow.
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On similar lines Tillson I read many need the continual reminder of being in touch and not missing anything.
And read somewhere there was medical evidence that people can become addicted to those crazy games some find so entertaining. When I first saw a good mate years ago sat on bus playing " super Mario" , thought it was for his kids. Seems adults (???) like playing kids games nowadays for hours on end ?? Dont get any of it...must be showing my age...
Collecting balloons full of coins and developing superpowers so you can jump over pictures of houses isn't exactly chess, is it ??
And read somewhere there was medical evidence that people can become addicted to those crazy games some find so entertaining. When I first saw a good mate years ago sat on bus playing " super Mario" , thought it was for his kids. Seems adults (???) like playing kids games nowadays for hours on end ?? Dont get any of it...must be showing my age...
Collecting balloons full of coins and developing superpowers so you can jump over pictures of houses isn't exactly chess, is it ??
a lot of that applies to my life too (and don't dismiss the idea of a thread for saying one has just farted or scratched ones arse; it could be the next "brexit thread" in the charging post)
Many I know have smart phone holders on their bicycles and motorcycles. The whole point of my ownership of both modes of transport is to be free of such nonsense.