Cell phones: Is a day of reckoning coming?

True story:

Got home tonight and was checking email on my phone. Screen started flickering and fading out. I restarted it, and the screen was all but dead. i went into the bathroom and closed the door to get what little light was being emitted to text my mom (she's on my plan) and tell her I might have to change plans.

Went to the store and got a Droid Razr. About $95 with tax. Bill should stay the same, but still hoping my dad will leave the plan and get a pay-as-you-go phone to save me $45 a month.

Could I have waited until the weekend to get a phone? Maybe. But I literally was on the road 5 minutes after it happened. I've turned my car around when I was 5 miles from home just to get my phone. It's like my security blanket, even if I don't use it on any given errand. I just like knowing it's there.

 

People continued to ride horses for a long time until cars got more and more affordable.

Think smartphone use is bad now? Just imagine what it will be like 10 or 20 years from now. People will probably be wearing goggles or glasses just to serve like a heads up cockpit display in which their eye movements serve to click on reference links like wiki, google, maps, etc.

Stuff like that sure would reduce senior moments.

But there is definitely a societal impact to all this. Rudeness, lack of civility, etc.

I am still freaked out by seeing/hearing someone apparently talking to themselves and then realizing they are talking into their Bluetooth.

VB

 

About $10 more, Bill was always in the mid-$30s not counting long distance. And in those days people would hop from one "10-10" service to another for long distance. Never made international calls in those days, so have no idea what those would have cost.

 

I guess I'm just old, but I don't understand the compulsion — the addiction — to being accessible all the time. What is so important that it can't wait an hour, two, three — shit, a whole weekend — to address? All the time, I see people out walking, and instead of, you know, taking in their surroundings, their heads are looking down at a fucking phone, texting someone. Really? Really? What inane shit is she/he texting about? Everything inconsequential, that's what.

I have a cell phone, stupid variety, that I take with me on trips out of town. I used it a couple weekends ago when I had a blowout and no spare. I use it to check in with the wife and daughter once a day so they know I haven't died from alcohol poisoning. Otherwise, that fucker's never used; hell, half the time I forget to take it with me.

Constant accessibility blows. Leave a fucking message. It it's important, I'll call you back. Promise.

 

Goddamn.

I don't even know you and I love you a little more now.

 

I don't mean to stray from company line here, but why wouldn't you want to be accessible? You don't have to answer every call or text message. You can put your phone on vibrate or turn it off whenever you'd like.

Leave aside social and trivial uses for a second. If you don't have your cell phone with you while out and about and your wife gets in a car crash, you're not going to know about it until you get home or, perhaps, to the office. That could take hours. Yes, we dealt with that for years, but with all the technology we have now, why should you? You don't have to give out your cell phone number to many people, and you don't have to ever make calls yourself. My grandfather, a functional and mobile 90-year-old, has a prepaid cell phone that he uses about once a month. But it's there for those rare emergencies, whether he needs to go to the hospital or he forgot what was on the grocery list.

 

If my wife gets in a car crash, she'll either be OK or dead. Either way, getting a call two hours earlier doesn't make a difference in what happens to her. Knowledge doesn't equate to my ability to affect the outcome.

Look, I'm not trying to tell anybody how to live their lives or use their phones. But, for me, being constantly accessible is a tax on my time — MY time. If I want to talk to you, I will. If I'm out camping for the weekend, well, you're shit out of luck because the phone is back home. Constant accessibility is a burden I won't bear because I don't have to. I choose this. With the phone always on, that choice is given to someone else. No thanks.

 

I can respect that, even as I freak out if I go to CVS without my phone. I don't even use it much, but I view it as almost a security blanket.

 

Seems that most of us posting here are in the same boat on these things. Also haven't joined the smart phone craze and although I'm sure I will at some point because there may not be another option, I'm holding out as long as possible. I understand their need for business purposes, but face it, most people don't use them for such.

People always ask me but don't you want this or that or wouldn't you use this or that? I'm sure I would and I'm sure I would like it, but for now I don't need it. I'm at home most of the time and I have a TV and Internet. Hell, I still have a home phone in part because with kids and family I want a central line and in part because it keeps all the other costs down with bundling and it limits the use of my cell phone, which can only call and text and has limits on both. My home phone has unlimited calling.

My wife's sister and her husband, about 10 years younger than us, visit often. We enjoy their company. But they can't sit for two seconds without checking their crap. Sometimes I don't look at my phone for days. I just don't get the need to be on all of the time.

 

I think burn cellphones are the best way to go.[/freqposter]

 

i thought the same thing until two years ago when my wife bought me a real phone and threw it in my lap one day. i couldn't imagine not having a phone now. a 20-second text is that simple.

 

We're anonymous platonic soulmates.