OTT much?
There's no peace anymore. There's no opportunity for solitude. The capacity to be alone is something which, if we value it, we've lost, and if we hate it, we've escaped it.Those are quotes from the special feature on Cellular. You know, those phones are not grafted to you and they all have an off switch. If you like solitude, turn off your damn phone, fella. Leave it behind. Nobody's forcing you to talk to someone while hiking in an Alpine meadow. (But if you fall off the cliff and break your leg, you'll probably be glad your solitude is breachable.)
The guy carrying on about face-to-face communication and how "within the last hundred years" we've taken that out - what, he's illiterate? Cripes, we can hear from people millennia dead, guy.
The guy saying the thing about cell calls is how trivial they are - nobody ever made a trivial phone call on a land line? Most conversations are trivial, when you get down to it; most of them are socializing, connecting, bonding. Cell phones just extend the reach of your ability to reach the people you want to reach.
In fairness, I should say lots of the commenters on that feature were not obsessively concerned about the destructive effects of cell phones on our psyches and society. But it was amazing how many of them were.
Labels: entertainment, media, miscellaneous
4 Comments:
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At 10:20 PM, November 01, 2008
Anonymous had this to say...
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At 7:24 PM, November 02, 2008
Barry Leiba had this to say...
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At 9:42 PM, November 02, 2008
The Ridger, FCD had this to say...
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At 5:30 AM, November 03, 2008
The Ridger, FCD had this to say...
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<-- Older Post ^ Home Newer Post -->Exactly!
I'm so often amazed when people say that they don't want a cell phone because they don't want to be tied down, contactable all the time, whatever. Or they don't want a BlackBerry because they want to be able to get away from their email. And I say the same thing as you have: no one's holding a gun to your head and telling you you have to answer it, can't turn it off, whatever. It's a tool. You control it.
There is an argument that's been given to me that seems valid, and turns it around: when one's boss tells one to carry one, and expects one to answer it all the time. It's easy to say, "Get a new boss," but at times like this that's not always the best choice.
Indeed. When it's your job, that's a different thing. But if he's the only one with the number, he might not actually call that often? I dunno ... my cell is rarely on.
As you say "get a new boss" isn't practical. But perhaps realizing that the problem then isn't the cell phone, but the boss (or the job), and that at least now you can leave your landline for an evening or weekend when you're on call...?
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