Tag Archives: Smart Phones

A Youthful Calling

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A Youthful Calling

Oh that I had been born later
in an age more prone to cater
to the new technology
that simply doesn’t gel with me.
I must ask. Is it me alone
who can no longer use the phone?
What every eight year old has mastered
makes me feel completely plastered.
Those buttons simply don’t make sense.
They leave me rattled, shaken, tense––
uttering words you’d find uncouth.
I do not glorify my youth,
but bygone memories do linger
of dials that fit a human finger––
phones simply used to call a friend
instead of apps that never end.
iPhone? I fear I’m not a fan.
I want a phone I’m smarter than.

The Prompt today was “Youth.”  In the weeks since my internet has increasingly become nonexistent, I’ve been relying on my iPhone to furnish a hotspot to post from.  Unfortunately, for the past few days, as my phone registered its full limit, I’ve been waiting for my usage to flip back to 0 MB, but alas it hasn’t.  Finally I went to Telcel where I was assigned to a young man whose knowledge of a little English rendered him understanding of my faulty Spanish and, like a gift from the gods, he informed me that the 1 GB was what I’d used in the past year, not in the past month, and he downloaded an app that will keep me informed of my month’s usage and flip over each month. (In addition, I learned that the price of extra MB’s is 25 cents Mexican per MB which is less than 2 U.S. cents!  So, I’m back to 1 MB usage and a bit less tense about the fact that I’m beginning my second week of no wifi.  Telmex (the phone company as opposed to Telcel, the cellphone company––both owned by the near-richest man in the world, Carlos Slim) was closed today so I’ll try again Monday. Perhaps I’ll just cancel my internet and landline and opt for more MGs on my phone.  It, at least, seems to be consistent in its service.

Before I left Telcel, I quipped to my young “savior” that along with their better understanding of Smart phones and iPhones, I have a feeling that future generations are going to be born with one little pointed finger more adapted to those tiny buttons on the cellphone. He laughed and assured me that I’d become accustomed to them, but I have my doubts. So, that is the backstory to this poem, as after leaving the Telcel center in the mall, I went to the food court which has free wifi and wrote the above poem.

If I’m not commenting on blogs or posting as much as before, this has been why.  May wifi at home be in my near future.  So far my complaints have not brought action.

New Year Wisdom

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New Year Wisdom

After going to a New Years party for a few hours, I came home to welcome in the New Year online with okcforgottenman. I was railing on about the fact that a prompt site for which I wished to download an app only had apps for phones and tablets. When I asked if they had an app for my Mac computer, they said no, the place they went to set up the prompt site didn’t have a setup for a Mac computer.  This, in addition to the fact that more and more apps and software are being set up to accommodate the tiny screens on cellphones and tablets without taking into consideration that some of us are on computers has caused me to wonder if  computers are becoming obsolete!

The fact that many baby boomers are now well into their sixties and approaching their seventies means our eyesight is not going to get any better, and frankly, I need the bigger screen. In addition, somehow those born in previous generations (at least mine) seem to have been born with larger thumbs than more recent generations, for I find it is physically impossible for me to navigate a phone or Kindle or tablet keyboard with even my fingers, let alone thumbs.

I then mentioned how everywhere I went, people were all on their phones—playing games, talking to people other than the people they were with, reading the news or blogs or email. No one was where they actually were! He replied that this didn’t bother him but then seemed to do an about-face by admitting, “I think something big is going to happen that will bring about the end of civilization, but I don’t necessarily know what it is. It might be Isis and it might be iPhones!”

What he has just said has the ring of truth to me. I’ve been thinking exactly the same thing, but never put it so well. I am frightened about how smart phones have taken us away from our surrounding people and environments. We are no longer one place at one time. Even if we are not talking on the phone, there is the potential of every person we know calling us at any time and any place. And most of us make that call a priority over whatever is going on at the time.

Okcforgottenman then told me about a new app that photoshops the faces of those talking on the computer, fixing the glitches, covering up all those details that Photoshop is so adept at covering up. Again, I had a feeling of déjà vu,  because I’ve been reading Ultimate Jest by David Foster Wallace, and just today, he talked about a time in the future when people on social networks are able to download an app that Photoshops their faces.

Eventually, the app makes changes to the point where people no longer really want to meet in person, because they feel they have become the false representation of themselves—or at least prefer it. No need to put on makeup, comb your hair, get dressed. Virtually, they will be perfected!! The trend reaches its zenith when in time, the app doesn’t even bother to start with the real image of the speaker but instead uses the image of a movie star or other “beautiful person” who most resembles the speaker–eventually coming to the place where what they have in common is four limbs and the same color of hair!

What he describes is so close to what okcforgottenman describes to me that I get a chill down my back and the brain freeze I always get when I’m faced with a startling truth I’ve never thought of before. Is there any science fiction that will not eventually become fact????

David Foster Wallace describes a turn that eventually makes people reject their fake personas and to go back to voice-only conversations that do not even present any images at all. In time, those who use the visual phones with face and body altering apps come to be seen as narcissistic, gauche and behind the times. This is something I cannot imagine happening as our dependence on cyber unreality becomes more and more prevalent.

As we retreat more and more into fantasy and living in the far distance, what will happen to the immediate world around us? Will it cease to have importance as anything other than providing for our immediate creature comforts such as food, bed, warmth, water and medical attention? Will all of our psychological, artistic, amorous, social and familial needs be met through our online devices? And as these devices get smaller and smaller, will we ourselves evolve into miniature beings capable of managing them? Are we evolving back down to subatomic size, and is this a cycle? Has it happened before?

Ridiculous. I’m being ridiculous. And yet who among us, born in the forties or fifties, would have ever imagined we could communicate with both words and pictures through the air, watch a movie on a device smaller than the hand piece of a telephone, or that people would be living their “real” lives out and even choosing husbands and wives on TV for all to see? How do we tell the difference between what is possible and what is  impossible anymore? I’m afraid it is hard to predict with any confidence at all.

https://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/stroke-of-midnight/