# Technophobia



## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

A recent exchange about intelligent computers brought this to mind. Well, that and seeing a world full of people whose reality is in the palms of their hands rather than around them. Do we really need machine intelligence to rule us? Watch this dystopian video if you dare!


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## Totenfeier (Mar 11, 2016)

I showed this video to my high school classes on the first day of school this year.

To no effect, I might add. Someone said a while back that the Internet was turning real sex into just bad porn; the same can be said of social interaction. Everything you want to see and do right in the palm of your hand, accessible at will? Who needs nearby boring meatbags?


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## Joe B (Aug 10, 2017)

Totenfeier said:


> I showed this video to my high school classes on the first day of school this year.
> 
> To no effect, I might add. Someone said a while back that the Internet was turning real sex into just bad porn; the same can be said of social interaction. Everything you want to see and do right in the palm of your hand, accessible at will? Who needs nearby boring meatbags?


This is a really harsh outlook, but I'm seeing it become more and more of a reality for people. It's awful!
I walk my dog and I watch people on their phones walking with others on their phones......they don't even talk; texting each other? I also see it in restaurants, where all the family members are on their phones and no one is talking to each other. 
I teach 5th and 6th graders and all they talk about is youtube.com. Every time I stop at a traffic light I look in the rear view mirror and 50% of the time the driver behind me has their head down, checking their phone.
My wife and I went to see a play at the local regional theater recently. We walked past a small club and there were about a half dozen young people in their early 20's standing out on the side walk with their phones lying flat in their outstretched hands at about heart level. It looked like some new religious worship. More and more people are utterly distracted from reality, all because they believe reality is in the palm of the hands.


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## SiegendesLicht (Mar 4, 2012)

I refuse to participate in this madness. My phone is a basic "dumb phone". I can make calls, text and take bad quality photos with it, but not surf. I like the Internet as much as the next person, but I reserve my enjoyment for when I am home on my laptop and free from all other occupations.


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## Joe B (Aug 10, 2017)

SiegendesLicht said:


> I refuse to participate in this madness. My phone is a basic "dumb phone". I can make calls, text and take bad quality photos with it, but not surf. I like the Internet as much as the next person, but I reserve my enjoyment for when I am home on my laptop and free from all other occupations.


I completely hear you. I'm still a hold out, never having had a cell phone yet. I know it will soon become a necessity, but when I get one, it'll be a "dumb phone" as well.


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## Antiquarian (Apr 29, 2014)

I miss the days when everything was broadcast over the airwaves. I explained this to my niece, how once upon a time there were just four or five channels on TV, and all it required was an antenna, no hard wired connexion, no monthly charges. She could not comprehend this, except to say "So it's like WiFi, right?" Remember when if you wanted to make a phone call using a public phone? If the receiver was particularly nasty you would use a handkerchief between your ear and the earpiece. I guess I'm just, you know, an antiquarian.


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## ldiat (Jan 27, 2016)

viewed this also and reminds me of this movie. the part when they sound the "Horn" and all the ground people move like "cattle' to the under ground "beings" where they are used for food


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

The smartphpone has made a historic change in society. My wife, for instance, now talks every day with relatives on three continents and plenty of other friends. But she doesn’t do it the way I might have thought she would.

I would have guessed that people would prefer talking to a live picture of the person on the other end a la Dick Tracy’s wrist TV. Microsoft dropped a big chunk of change betting on this when they bought Skype. But they were wrong. People don’t want to do this.

Next, just chatting without video, like a regular telephone. But my wife doesn’t do that either.

She “talks” entirely by texting, which is arduous and slow. Most conversations aren’t in real time, certainly a convenience. But the element of human interaction is reduced to something one-dimensional, without flavor. But never mind, that’s why there are emojis!

I’m not sure how to sort this out, except to guess that real face-to-face interaction with others is just too stressful. Now, for the first time, it can be avoided.


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## senza sordino (Oct 20, 2013)

I teach high school. I have to compete all the time for their attention. Some students are good, I never see their phone. Others students have their phone out all the time. How are their grades? I teach an AP class, and these students keep their phones tucked away for the hour and they do well. Others students in other classes who cannot put down their phone don't have high grades. It's an addiction for some, and I guess some people are more susceptible to addictions, and suffer the consequences. 

The school and school district will not enforce a blanket ban on such devices, maybe because they know it wouldn't be legal. We're not sure. They let teacher have bans, but we can't enforce with any authority with the school and district not backing us up. 

But it's a different world we live in now. We can't go back. The cat's already out of the bag. This train has already left the station. The stable doors have already been opened and the horse has bolted. Pandora's box has been opened. Use whatever metaphor you want. We're not going back. Some teachers carry their phone with them, and check their messages in class. (Not me, no one contacts me, and I can wait until the end of the day to find out how many likes I have here). What's it like in the private business world?


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## Guest (Oct 23, 2017)

senza sordino said:


> I teach high school. I have to compete all the time for their attention. Some students are good, I never see their phone. Others students have their phone out all the time. How are their grades? I teach an AP class, and these students keep their phones tucked away for the hour and they do well. Others students in other classes who cannot put down their phone don't have high grades. It's an addiction for some, and I guess some people are more susceptible to addictions, and suffer the consequences.


When I taught high school (retired in 2016), I got tired of dealing with cellphones, so I made things exceedingly nasty for them. If I caught them using it during class, even simply taking it out and looking at it/checking for messages or something, I suspended them from class and sent the to the vice-principal's office! Needless to say, they didn't test me very often, but if they did and a student got burned, then that chastened them for a long time. I told them don't bother telling me you were just checking the time since we have a clock on the wall. I also said to let me know IN ADVANCE if there were some emergency situation in their family such as someone in the hospital or jail  and they needed to leave their phone on the desk or check for messages. I can't understand why they called me the "cellphone Nazi." (Or the "essay Nazi," "grammar Nazi"...)


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## senza sordino (Oct 20, 2013)

A curious irony about students and their obsessive use of cell phones is that they aren't very proficient at other forms of technology. I took my students to the computer lab recently to use MSWord and MSExcel, I had to walk them through almost every step. I've also given my students an assignment looking for the news each week, they can use their phones. Many haven't bothered and now they're eight weeks behind. I can't even get them to use their phone for school use.

Something new I've noticed. Some students who need glasses don't bother getting glasses to read the whiteboard. Instead they photograph the board using their phone, and then look at their phone with the photo expanded. (I hope these students don't learn to drive)


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## Klassik (Mar 14, 2017)

senza sordino said:


> A curious irony about students and their obsessive use of cell phones is that they aren't very proficient at other forms of technology. I took my students to the computer lab recently to use MSWord and MSExcel, I had to walk them through almost every step.


As someone who works with college students, I have also observed that the younger students have a more difficult time with computers than students from around 10 years ago. My guess is the same as yours. I'm guessing today's adolescents use their phones more than computers. The adolescents of 10 years ago had to use the computer since the only smart phones back then used OSes like PamOS and weren't very popular.

I can't say this happens a lot, but every so often I come across students who want to read their research and type their papers on their phone! 



> Something new I've noticed. Some students who need glasses don't bother getting glasses to read the whiteboard. Instead they photograph the board using their phone, and then look at their phone with the photo expanded. (I hope these students don't learn to drive)


Perhaps they are taking pictures so they don't have to take notes. Perhaps manually writing the notes will benefit in recalling the information, but I don't know.


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## Joe B (Aug 10, 2017)

senza sordino said:


> Something new I've noticed. Some students who need glasses don't bother getting glasses to read the whiteboard. Instead they photograph the board using their phone, and then look at their phone with the photo expanded. (I hope these students don't learn to drive)


We had fireworks in town on July 4th weekend. People were filming it on their phones and watching the display on their phones instead of looking into the sky. Makes me think that the guys at PIXAR were ahead of their time when they made the movie "Wall-E."


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## Guest (Oct 24, 2017)

Not exactly related to technology, but a few years our counselors created a career assessment program for the sophomores, and part of the end product was a resume and a cover letter that they would actually mail. I was horrified by how few knew how to address an envelop!


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## Totenfeier (Mar 11, 2016)

senza sordino said:


> I teach high school. I have to compete all the time for their attention. Some students are good, I never see their phone. Others students have their phone out all the time. How are their grades? I teach an AP class, and these students keep their phones tucked away for the hour and they do well. Others students in other classes who cannot put down their phone don't have high grades. It's an addiction for some, and I guess some people are more susceptible to addictions, and suffer the consequences.
> 
> The school and school district will not enforce a blanket ban on such devices, maybe because they know it wouldn't be legal. We're not sure. They let teacher have bans, but we can't enforce with any authority with the school and district not backing us up.
> 
> But it's a different world we live in now. We can't go back. The cat's already out of the bag. This train has already left the station. The stable doors have already been opened and the horse has bolted. Pandora's box has been opened. Use whatever metaphor you want. We're not going back. Some teachers carry their phone with them, and check their messages in class. (Not me, no one contacts me, and I can wait until the end of the day to find out how many likes I have here). What's it like in the private business world?


You have nailed it, right there. No one who has been out of a classroom for as little as five years has _any_ conception of what school is like now, nor where the First World is headed. The Information Age? Please. The Lowest Common Denominator Crudest Entertainment Age, more like, not to mention the fact that, as was observed above, people can now freely express their latent distaste for each other through texting and emojis, instead of _talking_ and _emotion_. Hell's bell's, even in _1984_ the televisor was still screwed to the wall; now Big Brother can track your movements, spy on what you're doing, and peddle mind control 24/7, wherever you are - and you _want_ it that way!


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## senza sordino (Oct 20, 2013)

There was an episode of Star Trek The Next Generation called The Game

The crew gets addicted to a virtual reality game, which is a way for an alien race to take over the spaceship. The character Data is immune to the addiction because he's a robot, and saves the day. This episode seems prescient. Who's going to save our civilization from the addiction of the cell phone?


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## Joe B (Aug 10, 2017)

senza sordino said:


> There was an episode of Star Trek The Next Generation called The Game
> 
> The crew gets addicted to a virtual reality game, which is a way for an alien race to take over the spaceship. The character Data is immune to the addiction because he's a robot, and saves the day. This episode seems prescient. Who's going to save our civilization from the addiction of the cell phone?


It actually might become a non-issue in the not too distant future. This article goes into detail about the health consequences of our wireless technology and mass exposure to microwave radiation:

*The Largest Biological Experiment Ever*


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## Becca (Feb 5, 2015)

SiegendesLicht said:


> I refuse to participate in this madness. My phone is a basic "dumb phone". I can make calls, text and take bad quality photos with it, but not surf. I like the Internet as much as the next person, but I reserve my enjoyment for when I am home on my laptop and free from all other occupations.


My business is computer operating system software & management, I have 8 machines in my office and a desktop & laptop at home, so I don't need to carry one around with me. OK, my phone is slightly more than a dumb phone, but nowhere near a smart phone and it is more than adequate ... and I don't have to worry about paying data rates :lol:


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## Totenfeier (Mar 11, 2016)

Antiquarian said:


> I miss the days when everything was broadcast over the airwaves. I explained this to my niece, how once upon a time there were just four or five channels on TV, and all it required was an antenna, no hard wired connexion, no monthly charges. She could not comprehend this, except to say "So it's like WiFi, right?" Remember when if you wanted to make a phone call using a public phone? If the receiver was particularly nasty you would use a handkerchief between your ear and the earpiece. I guess I'm just, you know, an antiquarian.


And that's another reason why we don't understand each other anymore: mass communication has been replaced by decentralized communication, for lack of a better term. When Walter Cronkite (showing my age) said at the end of a broadcast, "And that's the way it is," everybody in the country (give me a little hyperbole to work with here) believed that that was, in fact, the way it was. For good or ill, our collective media gave us a common narrative, and a shared vision of who we were as a nation, and where we were headed. Now, many people have noticed that you - the individual "you" - can now select what "news" you wish to follow and believe to be true, and since so many things online are fake - why not the news you don't want to hear? Not to mention the algorithms that are constantly watching you online, bringing you more and more of what you've indicated that you want, thus cutting you off from trying and experiencing new things without making a special effort to break out of the information and commercial jail they've bound you in, without your knowledge.

Yeah, I've got an issue here.


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## TxllxT (Mar 2, 2011)

My wife often reminds her late mother telling her, when she got stuck in an all-lamenting mood about the whole world and all people living in it: "You be good!" My wife's mother had survived the Leningrad Blockade during WWII and came out with surprising _joie de vivre_, because every new day, every new hour she noticed the difference with those ghastly inhuman times. I guess, the basic problem for young people is lacking this true feel of history.


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## senza sordino (Oct 20, 2013)

Google wants to run cities, without being elected
The Guardian Newspaper

Do we want technology companies running our cities? Smart streets to ease traffic flow? CCTV on every corner? Facial recognition on every street corner? Targeted advertising at bus stops or on buses? Electricity rates that change minute by minute fluctuating with supply and demand? Water rates that fluctuate? Ubiquitous wifi? GPS, speed and location on your car uploaded to the cloud, for parents and police to monitor?

Can your city services be hacked by a foreign entity? Can your city services be hacked by a 400 pound guy sitting on a bed?


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## Totenfeier (Mar 11, 2016)

senza sordino said:


> Google wants to run cities, without being elected
> The Guardian Newspaper
> 
> Do we want technology companies running our cities? Smart streets to ease traffic flow? CCTV on every corner? Facial recognition on every street corner? Targeted advertising at bus stops or on buses? Electricity rates that change minute by minute fluctuating with supply and demand? Water rates that fluctuate? Ubiquitous wifi? GPS, speed and location on your car uploaded to the cloud, for parents and police to monitor?
> ...


No; no; no; no; no; no; no; no; no; yes; yes.


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## SiegendesLicht (Mar 4, 2012)

Totenfeier said:


> And that's another reason why we don't understand each other anymore: mass communication has been replaced by decentralized communication, for lack of a better term. When Walter Cronkite (showing my age) said at the end of a broadcast, "And that's the way it is," everybody in the country (give me a little hyperbole to work with here) believed that that was, in fact, the way it was. For good or ill, our collective media gave us a common narrative, and a shared vision of who we were as a nation, and where we were headed. Now, many people have noticed that you - the individual "you" - can now select what "news" you wish to follow and believe to be true, and since so many things online are fake - why not the news you don't want to hear? Not to mention the algorithms that are constantly watching you online, bringing you more and more of what you've indicated that you want, thus cutting you off from trying and experiencing new things without making a special effort to break out of the information and commercial jail they've bound you in, without your knowledge.
> 
> Yeah, I've got an issue here.


For me that is actually one positive side of all-permeating digitalization: a plethora of opinions and views floating about, rather than a single guy telling the entire nation the supposedly only true version of events. What you have described, sounds a little like the Soviet Union, rather than the self-proclaimed "land of the free".


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## Dim7 (Apr 24, 2009)

Yeah, as much as echo chambers are a problem I'd rather have them decentralized rather than single national one.


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## SiegendesLicht (Mar 4, 2012)

Dim7 said:


> Yeah, as much as echo chambers are a problem I'd rather have them decentralized rather than single national one.


Yes, and to any story there are always several sides.


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## Totenfeier (Mar 11, 2016)

SiegendesLicht said:


> For me that is actually one positive side of all-permeating digitalization: a plethora of opinions and views floating about, rather than a single guy telling the entire nation the supposedly only true version of events. What you have described, sounds a little like the Soviet Union, rather than the self-proclaimed "land of the free".


As long as you have an educated and informed citizenry that is actually _capable of critical and discriminating thought_, then yes. However...


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## senza sordino (Oct 20, 2013)

I was reading the Guardian Newspaper this morning, online version ironically. There I found an article titled Why we need a 21st Century Martin Luther to challenge the Church of Technology . October 31st is the 500th anniversary of Martin Luther nailing his 95 thesis to the church door, and on October 31st of this year the author will publish his full list of 95 thesis challenging the church of tech. You will be able to read the full list  here

I took away two cell phones in class last week, the students put their phones in the locked cabinet for the duration of the class. They freely admitted their phone was a distraction and voluntarily put away their phone in the locked cabinet, for which only I have a key. I often ask students to put their phones in the cabinet for the hour, rarely will students do it. Most can't stand being separated from their phones even momentarily.


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

senza sordino said:


> I was reading the Guardian Newspaper this morning, online version ironically. There I found an article titled Why we need a 21st Century Martin Luther to challenge the Church of Technology . October 31st is the 500th anniversary of Martin Luther nailing his 95 thesis to the church door, and on October 31st of this year the author will publish his full list of 95 thesis challenging the church of tech. You will be able to read the full list  here
> 
> I took away two cell phones in class last week, the students put their phones in the locked cabinet for the duration of the class. They freely admitted their phone was a distraction and voluntarily put away their phone in the locked cabinet, for which only I have a key. I often ask students to put their phones in the cabinet for the hour, rarely will students do it. Most can't stand being separated from their phones even momentarily.


I am so thankful I retired from teaching in 1996, before the cellphone craze began to take hold.


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## Merl (Jul 28, 2016)

I''m fortunate. Some of my students still forget to go to the toilet and wet themselves or wipe their noses with their arms (resulting in the legendary 'snail trails' on their jumpers). They're not allowed to use mobile phones in school and even if they were they couldn't read most of the text on them. I use modern technology at work and at home (and I have a very good smartphone). I like technology. It makes my life easier in many ways. I'm glad I grew up without the tecnology we have today as I was distracted enough at school without having what the kids have at their fingertips now. Btw, Alexa says classical music is dead.


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## EddieRUKiddingVarese (Jan 8, 2013)

SiegendesLicht said:


> I refuse to participate in this madness. My phone is a basic "dumb phone". I can make calls, text and take bad quality photos with it, but not surf. I like the Internet as much as the next person, but I reserve my enjoyment for when I am home on my laptop and free from all other occupations.


Hey you too, I gotta dumb phone to- even held out here in OZ on the 2G network for so long that my phone company sent me a free 3G dumb phone for being such a Technphob- see it pays not to be at the bleeding edge


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## EddieRUKiddingVarese (Jan 8, 2013)

^ PS my 2G dumb phone was a Motorola Razr- remember them it only got replaced with my new dumb phone 6 months ago..


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## Dim7 (Apr 24, 2009)

My phone is not smart but a frickin' pretentious pseudo-intellectual....


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## Klassik (Mar 14, 2017)

Different eras, different distractions. Back in my day, we used to send text messages to one another at school. On phones? Of course not. We would write notes to one another and secretly pass them around the room. One time I got caught passing notes around in German class, but the teacher approved when he read our notes since we were writing our notes in German! :lol:

As for other distractions, I usually distracted myself away from boring high school class discussions that were straight out of anti-intellectual textbooks by checking out the girls in the class and making plans to read the Sears catalog when I got home. 



EddieRUKiddingVarese said:


> ^ PS my 2G dumb phone was a Motorola Razr- remember them it only got replaced with my new dumb phone 6 months ago..


It still has to be cutting edge since it's a RAZR, right? :lol:

But, yeah, I remember those. I remember taking a woman I was with at the time to the T-Mobile store in 2005 so she could buy one of those. It was $500 if I remember correctly, but I certainly didn't pay for it. Camera phones were the hot thing back then. Unfortunately, I had some brick of a phone back then that had a monochrome LCD screen. It got amazing battery life, but it wasn't capable of receiving any naughty pictures the woman might have sent using her RAZR camera phone!


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## Klassik (Mar 14, 2017)

Dim7 said:


> My phone is not smart but a frickin' pretentious pseudo-intellectual....


That's what happens when you set the ringtone to the _Ride of the Valkyries_!


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## EddieRUKiddingVarese (Jan 8, 2013)

Klassik said:


> That's what happens when you set the ringtone to the _Ride of the Valkyries_!


What happening when you choose 4'33"


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## Totenfeier (Mar 11, 2016)

EddieRUKiddingVarese said:


> What happening when you choose 4'33"


The ultimate bliss of _nirvana_.


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## Klassik (Mar 14, 2017)

EddieRUKiddingVarese said:


> What happening when you choose 4'33"


You wouldn't hear your calls come in, but that's okay since I'm guessing Cage fans don't get many callers! Perhaps there's a benefit to being a Cage fan? :lol:

I wonder if there is a smartphone app that automatically blasts telemarketers with contemporary classical music (aside from 4'33") without the user having to hear it. If so, perhaps we can eradicate telemarketers! :clap:


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## TxllxT (Mar 2, 2011)

My smartphone plays a Prokofiev soundbite when somebody calls and Mussorgsky, when a SMS has arrived. It's an easy job to make your own ringtones. Within Windows on my PC I've changed all the standard sounds into Tchaikovsky, Prokofiev & Mussorgsky soundbites. Really, there's nothing so exciting than hearing a choir from 'War and Peace' shout, when Windows pulls an alarm...


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