Amelia Earhart’s parents must not have been at all surprised by the career that she chose. Hopefully the outcome is more positive than her namesake’s, though. Oh well, I guess that everyone needs to have a “thing” huh?
Late breaking news! There is a huge surge in babies named Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Oprah Winfrey, and Warren Buffet.
Later breaking news! All of that wealth still makes it quite hard to get through the eye of that needle.
While there are many advances in mobile technology, there is none more prominent (nowadays anyways) than the Apple iPhone. Subsequent to its release in June 2007, it has made a definite mark on society. It has created huge lines, buzz in media, envy in people’s eyes, and a huge increase in revenue for the companies involved. Despite much hype and doubt, it has been a game-changing device for the smartphone world.
It has a user interface that is the standard to which all others are (now) compared, it is sleek, it is expensive enough to stay out of the hands of the less privileged (like Coach purses for girls), and it has an entire fanatical subculture to support it. There are some people who use it for its useful features, others who just want it so that they can be hip with the times, and others who will probably say that it’s an essential part of their life.
The thing is, I think that we need to help these people. Their iPhones are taking over their lives. Here we thought that Attention-Deficit Disorder (although this has been replaced by Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder in psychology as of DSM-IV, but I could not apply the hyperactivity to iPhone users) was something that we could treat. Unfortunately it seems like we are inducing it in people. And while I am talking specifically about the iPhone, the general principle still stands that people are getting worse at maintaining their concentration on tasks at hand. They have instant messaging that they’re always connected to, text messages that encourage deplorable grammar, and the ever annoying Twitter (dumb as far back as 2007), which combines all of these things at one time.
Most people with iPhones seem to have an incessant need to check them. People need to stop this. They need to start living lives that do not involve the Internet. Let us move onward from our digital slavery!
I am slightly amused that I am writing such a thing for a couple of reasons:
When I’m driving around, I definitely notice when someone has Christian paraphernalia on their vehicle. This can range anywhere from a fish emblem to the more clever slogans to mysterious symbols that are a little more difficult to deduce. While I probably like seeing their proclamations of faith more than other things, it can still lead to pretty interesting results.
A little while back I saw a van in and around Los Angeles, CA with the slogan: God’s way is the best way
The van was for a company that cleaned carpets named Best Way Carpet Clean. In addition to the above slogan, they also had some fish stickers on their van. Oh and there was a website listed on the van, but it seemed to be out of commission when I tried to access it.
In any case, what is the real motivation for them to put that on their van? Seems to me that it is either because they hope:
Whatever the reason, it seems to me that unless they made a special deal with God to miraculously clean carpets for them, it doesn’t have too much of a place in that environment. Not on their work van. As it is, it just seems like a ploy to get more business and hence make more money.
Lesson is: be a Christian anywhere (even as a rapper), but don’t do it out of incorrect motives. Even if we can’t figure it out, someone already knows when you have false intentions (where that someone is God).
In an article at Yahoo! about cracking down on college music pirates, I read about one Sarah Barg, a sophomore from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. It portrayed her as a girl who was just taking part in what everyone else was doing. The article wanted to put her in the role of one who is definitely not the worst (I mean she only downloaded 381 songs when others were downloading thousands!). In response to it all, Barg says
Obviously I knew it was illegal, but no one got in trouble for it
Now, I know that all higher education is not equal. And I know that maybe not all of them are as good as the University of California, San Diego, but that does not allow for such ridiculous thoughts. I think that ignorance is not a good excuse for doing wrong. The onus is on you to do what’s right. However, I think that actually knowing that something is wrong and yet still doing it speaks of some darker black.
In any case, I don’t think that it’s a matter of intelligence. I think it’s a sign of the times.
Piracy does not just affect music as I wrote in Even Worse Than At First Glance, Cheain’ Chinese, and (in regards to cheating in general) Cheaters 4 Life. Wow I did not realize that I had so many entries devoted to ranting about cheaters! But I digress.
Reasons why you shouldn’t be a (music) pirate:
Now I admit that I’m not perfect, but I would like to think that once I knew the truth then I would change my behavior to match what I know. Not everyone is like this. But they should be. It just makes sense to have your behavior in line with your opinions, does it not? Don’t be the person who gets laughed at for coming off as stupid. Nobody wants 15 minutes of infamy.
Maybe as a result of being out of school, I feel like I am somewhat out of the loop on the latest happenings. When I was in school, Xanga was something that I knew about even before it got big. Likewise with Facebook and so on. However, I feel as if I’ve been a little bit late learning about Twitter.
For those in the know, you can probably skip this paragraph. Basically Twitter is a new service that is meant for people to basically say what they are doing at a precise moment: now. Whatever you are doing, Twitter is a way by which you can let others know what it is that you are doing. You can do this via cellular phone (by way of text message), instant messenger, or on their website.
That’s all there is to it. Pretty simple right? Well I think that it’s dumb.
There is lots to be said for what a marvelous job they have done using Ruby on Rails as the platform on which they developed their service. I mean just imagine having to deal with possibly thousands and thousands of tiny connections every second. The effort put into the software engineering is impressive to say the least.
However, I think that the service is fairly horrendous in terms of what it means for people. There are some people out there who really do enjoy knowing about what all of their friends (and strangers for that matter) are doing every second of every day. But I think that this is just a Litmus Test for society as a whole. In a society of cellular phones, Blackberrys, and the like, we are forever on the go and busy.
I think that people need to take a step back and realize that it is so ridiculous to have all of these contraptions. Sure I have a great admiration for the engineering and development that all of these products represent. I even have a respect for the situations when they are actually necessary. But in terms of actual worth for the great herd we call “the public”, I think they are fairly detrimental to the well-being of people. Do you think that the people in the United States of America are any happier with their gadgets than tribesmen in some far off corner of the earth? Well they might think so, but who’s to say?
Even more than happiness, I say that all of these things are making us constantly bored. How can that be? In so being always prone to want to fill the time with checking e-mail or answering the phone, we have become people that always need to do something. And when we don’t have something to do, we are bored.
There are more important things, and I think that we all know this deep within. Have you ever thought that spending time with those around you is more important than answering your cellular phone right away? As I once heard
That’s why voicemail was invented.
E-mail is convenient and easy, but a letter is still desirable because of the fact that it takes time and energy to write one. Think about these things the next time it comes up in your life. I try to do so in mine. I won’t interrupt a conversation just to answer the phone, and I know that there is a time and a place for when e-mail is appropriate.
Twitter is a cool product/service, but I for one think that it’s continuing in the grand tradition of leading humans down the wrong road. It’s making us bored as we’re waiting for another instant Twitter update. It makes us want to sit in front of the computer or stare at our cellular phone even more. It is making people more connected to their devices and less connected to other people in a real, tangible manner. Basically, Twitter is dumb.