"Never trust anything that can think for itself
if you can't see where it keeps its brain."
-- J.K. Rowling
 |
| Tin can telephone 11-19-14 |
"The greatest task before civilization at present
is to make machines what they ought to be,
the slaves, instead of the masters of men."
-- Havelock Ellis
"Lo! Men have become the tools of their tools."
-- Henry David Thoreau
It may look dumb, but I like my shitty old cell phone.
It's a good phone.
It works. It does what I need it to do.
It can't access the Internet. I can't watch a movie on it. It doesn't do Face Time or Snap Chat. It can't give me driving directions or tell me where the closest Starbucks is. It can't play music. It can't remind me to do stuff. It can't pay my bills. I can't play games on it. It doesn't have a touch screen and it takes super shitty pictures. It can't talk.
If I drop it in the tub (and I have), it still works. If I drop it on the floor (and I do, a lot), it still works. If I dropped it off a cliff it'd probably still work.
You want to know what else my dumb phone can do?
It can call people and it can text people.
That's what I got it for, and that's what I use it for.
I have a good computer. I have a 54-inch flat screen TV for movies. I have an excellent camera. I have a working GPS and an iPod. If I need to remember something, I write myself a note. If I want to play a game, I pull out Yahtzee! or a deck of cards and get some people together. If I want to talk to someone face-to-face, I do it for real.
Besides, everyone else seems to have a phone "smarter" than mine. Whenever I need the services of one, everyone else is always happy to oblige.
I like that I'm not like everyone else.
I like that my phone doesn't control every waking moment of every waking hour.
I like that my phone doesn't lead me around by the nose in a trance.
I like that my phone doesn't lead me around by the nose in a trance.
I like that I am not so transfixed by my phone screen that I am oblivious to all of the real life happening around me.
I like that I don't depend on my phone for really important stuff.
I like that I never talk to anyone named Siri, because I don't want to be in a fucking relationship with a fucking machine.
It really, really bothers me -- no, it really, really frightens me -- that we've given those little devices so much power and so much control and so much importance and so much attention.
Here's the thing, though. When my shitty old cell phone dies, I am afraid I won't have any other choice but to get a stupid smartphone.
It's pretty much the only option out there anymore, and I feel super manipulated and coerced and controlled and left without a choice.
Maybe I'm just turning into an old fuddy-duddy. But maybe it's a valid fear.
Maybe I'm just turning into an old fuddy-duddy. But maybe it's a valid fear.
Carl Sagan, the famous astronomer/astrophysicist who was a shit-ton smarter than a cell phone said this:
"We've arranged a civilization in which most crucial elements
profoundly depend on science and technology.
We have also arranged things so that almost no one understands science and technology.
This is a prescription for disaster.
We might get away with it for a while, but sooner or later this combustible mixture
of ignorance and power is going to blow up in our faces."
Being the only person without a Smartphone is like being the only sober person at a party where everyone else is sloppy drunk. They all think they're having a great time, but they all look pretty damn ridiculous, and you know you're going to be a whole lot better off once the party's over.
