I figured reading about all the controversy in General, I'd start my own.

Seriously...

I've grown up around computers, I got my first, an Atari when I was a child. Yep, I dated myself. That said, I am not scared of technology, but I am becoming perhaps a bit leery what it's becoming to "society".

I was watching local news coverage of CES. I'm a gadget guy, when PocketPCs were new, I had to have every new one. I still have my Axim, my iPaq (monochrome!) and hp PPcs right next to me. So, don't get me wrong, I'm not paranoid.

Now I'm not talking about Big Brother, so I hope this discussion doesn't get sidetracked into that.

I just think that people are becoming too reliant on technology, and can't do anything without it any more. We have "smart" devices, so smart people are going away.

Smart mattresses?

Self driving cars?

Clothing that tells you how hard you worked out. Hell, I rely on my sweat for that (I think others around me do too).

Smart pans that tell you when your food is properly cooked (I mean what's the fun of not contracting salmonella )? On a side note one of my best cooking experiences was under cooking a frozen steak when I was in a rush after work. Best steak I ever had, coming from a family that always cooked their meat "well done".

Anyone else feeling the same? I'm not trying to rant, just wondering how many other fellow tech geeks feel this way. In my small world of people I know personally, they think it's the best thing.

Capitalism supplies people what people are willing to pay for and use.

People being what they are basically.

Well, you get the idea.

Face it. If something in life makes your life easier? You are going to use it.
I know outside forces love to take advantage of this human trait.

It is just the way things are.

There will always be people who buy things they don't need, often with money they don't have. Personally, I buy only what is essential and use it until it stops working. This is my third computer in 30 years, but I'm still using the same cooker and refrigerator...

today i was standing in a crowded bus next to a guy who was surfing facebook (you know the place where people use their real names and reveal all sorts of personal information) and from there to an article about online surveillance technologies.
i thought: "surveillance technologies? i'm standing next to you and can simpy read everything over your shoulder! no technology needed!"

As P. T. Barnum is reputed to have said, "There's one born every minute."

In a way, I understand the fitness stuff. Persons have long looked for ways to exercise that don't involve, um, er, like, you know, actual effort . . . .

For the rest of it, see above.

I feel the same way, especially about young people. Nowadays when I go out, I can't see anyone under 30 who isn't using a smartphone as they walk along. They live permanently online, trailing an invisible umbilical cord that ties them to the Internet. I go online from my computer at home when I want to be online, but I do have a life to live as well.

What frosts my cake is when I see two persons dining out together and separately buried in their phones. Why bother?

I remember reading a short sci-fi story when I was young about a society in which everyone lived in his or her own little room and communicated by television (sorry, I can't remember who wrote it, but, knowing my reading habits at the time, it was likely Isaac Asimov or Poul Anderson, but I'm not making any bets). That vision seems to have come to pass, only the little rooms are portable and persons carry them around wherever they go.

If it's the one I'm thinking of, it's called The Machine Stops and it wasn't written by a regular SF author at all but by E.M. Forster of all people. In the story, everyone lives in a comfortable pod serviced by The Machine. Then The Machine begins to run down. There are more and more malfunctions. Finally everyone dies.

Certain areas are plagued by mobility scooters, others by smart phones, cars are everywhere, trains don't run, buses are late or dropped out, shops have little stock, supermarkets have killed off competition, & we buy lots of goods online.
Times certainly have changed since the 50's, but are we really better off?

In the 50's most working-class people didn't have a home phone, a television set or central heating. Lots of people had outside toilets. We had an inside one but no bathroom; we bathed in a tin bath in the kitchen. The only fast food available was fish and chips. We ate a lot less meat, but we also had a lot less obesity. Typically there was only one "fatty" in each school class.

Public transport was cheap and reliable. There was a pay phone on practically every corner so you didn't really need your own. There were no supermarkets and many people had no fridge (let alone a freezer) so housewives like my mother did small shops for meat and veg every day. Everything was freshly cooked from raw materials. There was always a shopping street within easy distance with at least a butcher, a grocer, a greengrocer, a chemist and a baker. In a larger shopping area (perhaps a bus ride away) there would be a haberdasher, a fishmonger, and gas and electricity showrooms where you could buy spare parts for your appliances as well as paying your bills.

We were poor but I don't think we were so badly off. I know I never went hungry and there was plenty of entertainment (radio, gramophone). And we children played in the street with an older child supervising.

Regardless of smartphone usage, in comparison to e.g. the 50s or 60s, most people now live in their own 'cells'. The cells being an individual, couple or family unit in a self contained house with the omnipresent car parked outside. The car in fact was a driving force in establishing the dominance of the supermarkets and out of town retail parks and began the demise of the high streets, it was online shopping which put the last few nails in the coffin. The car facilitates the avoidance of public transport and any interaction with neighbours (out of the house, into the car).

I'm fortunate in that I live in an area which, for now, has held on to it's traditional high street, complete with butchers, bakers, ironmongers, drapers shops, etc, etc. We also still use the local taxi firms, something which my relatives down in London find baffling, since 'uber' came along and now they can order a tracked taxi which they can pay for online and follow on a gps map, etc.

It's not so much this 'umbilical cord' I find upsetting. Yes some spend way too much time buried in their devices. I can't tell you how many twenty and thirty somethings I see on the streets of Manhattan (BTW I am a thirty something) walk into a street against the light or into other people because they're buried in their device. Hell, maybe I'd make a fortune creating an app that says "left foot forward, right foot forward..."

It just seems to me that fewer and fewer people are capable of doing basic life functions without the technology. Use the phone to get a recipe on making kickass ribs? Fine, an excellent idea. Using their smartphone to connect to a pan to tell them their rice is cooked? It seems absurd to me.

Can't get around the corner without GPS? Absurd. I have a coworker who can't find her way around her own town without her phone.

You could call the app "Drill Sergeant".

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Steve Stites

It's not technology that's the problem. It's the stupid.

The "information superhighway" has become the information bait-and-switch, and too many persons are taking the bait.

http://www.mercurynews.com/2017/01/0...rs-really-pay/

i think society is missing conventions about smartphone usage, or sometimes even common sense.
like: while you are getting on a bus or crossing the street or in interaction (however passing and superficial), you put it in your pocket.
society is full of unwritten rules & conventions, but they (the rules & conventions) haven't caught up with mobile devices.
i sincerely hope they will.

apart from that, i, too, find it deeply disturbing if someone can't find their way from A to B without GPS...


edit:
just lol'd at this:
what a realistic, disillusioned point of view.