Thread Rating:
  • 0 Vote(s) - 0 Average
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
Is it just me or is the 21st century....rather boring?
#60
(09-20-2020, 02:57 PM)beechnut79 Wrote:
(05-12-2020, 11:47 PM)pbrower2a Wrote:
(05-12-2020, 06:57 PM)Kinser79 Wrote: The idea that smartphones are a fad is to misunderstand what they are.  Horseless carriages, moving pictures, talking pictures and the tee-vee were all once called fads too.  Of those only one actually proved to be a fad--the tee-vee--but only because we have superior methods of doing the same thing with more multipurpose technology.  Seriously, were it not for my Boomer mother we wouldn't even have a tee-vee in the house (excluding the ones connected to a gaming console).

It's here to stay until something surpasses it. What surprises me that it isn't built into laptop computers to take advantage of the larger display for data. So instead of "wshakespeare1564" having to press strokes that read "ebrowning 1806" to send e-mail, "wshakespeare1564" writes his sonnet and dials the phone number for "ebrowning1806" and sends it, reciprocating with her own sonnet.  As with television we have improvements of not only the television receiver and an astonishing cutting of price but also improved means of transmitting TV signals.  When TV was VHF only, many people where I live were buying TV's from people in Fort Wayne, Indiana where signals from Indianapolis, Dayton, and Toledo didn't quite reach... so nothing did. That's over. 

It may not be so much that the smart phone is adopting great new technologies but instead that institutions adapt to it.  With the appropriate ap one can read a check and get the money represented deposited in one's account. But television did much the same thing as a standard. The smart phone can do much that a television can do -- except, of course, play a feature film on a screen of adequate size. I would love some day to play movies of about eighty years ago on a giant TV screen as if I were in a theater.   

I am using what is basically a TV screen for reading what people post on the Web. I just wish that I had a touch screen so that I could offer some macabre anti-Trump propaganda... you don't want to know what I substitute for the zero's in "2020".

Have noticed that damn near every industry one may do business with bugs you to get the corresponding app; just what is needed to complicate our lives even further. Any of you noticed that each generation seems to demand more conveniences than the previous one enjoyed.  And it seems to me that this cycle will need to be broken in order for us to successfully tackle such issues as climate change. Any of you believe, for example, that the one person, one car mindset has to go?

That implies that (1) people again live in mass housing and rely upon mass transportation, (2) that people can work remotely if they do most jobs,  and (3) that such perishables as groceries are within walking distance. That is so in New York City and perhaps a few other cities. Americans would have to make big adaptations to live as people do in Japanese or South Korean cities. The giant city that I know best (Chicago) has good public transit that I find easy to use even if I live 150 miles away and use it rarely. On the other hand if I lived outside of the densely-populated core of Chicago I would still need a car just to go to the grocery store or a medical office.

People in rural areas will still need cars just for getting groceries and going to church, the doctor's or dentist's office, civic or fraternal organizations, or the out-of-town game between the high schools of towns sixty miles apart. This said, the middle class in New York City is priced out of owning cars, but poor people in rural New Mexico still  need cars and would be helpless without them.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist  but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.


Reply


Messages In This Thread
RE: Is it just me or is the 21st century....rather boring? - by pbrower2a - 09-20-2020, 03:15 PM

Forum Jump:


Users browsing this thread: 1 Guest(s)