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Tag Archives: mobiles
Ebooks Are Changing The Way We Read And The Way Novelists Write
A thought provoking article in today’s guardian (10 August 2015). The author argues that in a world subject to multiple online distractions the way in which we read books is changing. Readers now flick between messages from friends back to their ebook rather than, as in times past devoting their whole attention to a book. In effect our attention span is less than was the case prior to the proliferation of technology, particularly mobile devices. The author also contends that ebooks are changing the way in which authors write. For the article please visit, http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/aug/10/ebooks-are-changing-the-way-we-read-and-the-way-novelists-write?CMP=share_btn_link
Cyborg
The baby nestled in your loving hands. Your soft caresses elicit no response from it’s dead, metallic body. You fall asleep and dream of texts, the phone grasped in your warm, cyborg hand.
Turn Off Your Mobiles
A good piece in yesterday’s Guardian (20 August 2014) about the mania for using smart phones at concerts and other similar events to record and/or photograph proceedings rather than, as in times gone by simply immersing oneself in the activity. Perhaps the pendulum has swung too far and people have lost the capacity to simply enjoy an activity without feeling the need to photograph and record it to death. I, sadly have my doubts but, as is so often said only time will tell. For the article please go to http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/aug/20/kate-bush-transcendence-v-smartphones
King Ludd
Oh for the days of your when I could be found sitting reading with nothing but the ticking of a mantle clock to keep me company. No e-mail, internet or mobile telephone to distract me. Oh blissful memories of sitting on a wooden bench in a pleasant garden with nought but the singing of the birds as my companions.
Oh the irony of waxing lyrical about the joys of days gone by on a laptop!
Technology has it’s place. I well remember failing to meet my friend Brian in the days prior to either of us owning a mobile. Both of us waited in London’s Victoria mainline station but in entirely different parts of that huge concourse. You can guess the rest, we failed to make contact and returned home frustrated to put it mildly! Today such mishaps are much easier to avoid as short of forgetting one’s mobile or the battery failing one can call or text to ascertain where your friend is.
The internet has opened up the world and is, on the whole a force for good. Authoritarian regimes find it increasingly difficult to prevent their populations from knowing what is going on in the wider world. Even in North Korea where access to the internet is prohibited accept for a privileged few in the higher reaches of the regime, some ordinary North Koreans manage to get online with the assistance of iPhones, which is to be welcomed.
However I still feel a sense of nostalgia for those simpler times when the internet had not yet been born and landlines ruled supreme. The constant exposure to extraneous noise (the pinging of e-mail, the beep of yet another text arriving) will unless we take great care destroy something incredibly precious – the ability to completely switch off and lose oneself in the company of friends, nature or a good book. .
I don’t have a magic bullet to square this vicious circle. However when I see children playing sports rather than glued to their mobile devices I do glimpse a ray of hope. Listen to the birds, go for a walk and if you possibly can leave your phone at home or at the very least turn it off.
For my author’s page please visit http://www.amazon.co.uk/K.-Morris/e/B00CEECWHY/ref=ntt_dp_epwbk_0
Ring Ring
Mobile telephones are a mixed blessing. Being in my mid fourties I am old enough to remember the days prior to the invention of the mobile. I vividly recollect feeding ten pence coins into bulky metal phones in bright red telephone boxes and, as technology advanced inserting pre-paid phone cards. It is perhaps a human trait to look at the past through rose tinted spectacles, to become all dewy eyed about the red telephone boxes which for decades where a familiar sight on practically every street of significance in the UK. It is doubtless easy to forget entering a phone box only to find that the receiver had been wrenched off by vandals, the glass had been smashed or both events had coincided to make the phone box unusable.
All of the above is true. I’ve been in phone boxes in which the receiver had parted company with the wire securing it to the handset and I’ve shivered in those tiny cabins due to the glass having been smashed. Consequently I am well aware of the benefits of mobile telephones not least as a means of contacting family or friends when one is running unexpectedly late or in case of emergencies, however the mobile is surely one of the most overused inventions (do I mean abused)?
A couple of weeks ago the British media was full of how a check-out lady in Sainsburys (a leading UK supermarket) had refused to serve a customer due to the lady holding a conversation on her mobile while, at the same time interacting with the shop assistant. The customer subsequently complained to Sainsburys, received an apology and was compensated with Sainsbury’s shopping vouchers.
I don’t condone the actions of the check-out lady. I can however understand her intense annoyance at the rudeness (doubtless unintended) of the customer who instead of interacting with her chose instead to split her attention between the person on the other end of the line and the shop assistant.
When I’m out with friends I often turn my mobile off so I can concentrate on interacting with them which is after all the whole purpose of socialising with friends.
At home I’ll frequently allow the voicemail on my landline to take calls when I’m writing or sometimes simply relaxing. Occasionaly I’ll interrupt voicemail and speak with the caller but by no means always. Technology should be our servant but we are in danger of allowing it to become our master.
I’ll finish with an incident from my own life. Yesterday I was meeting a friend for a meal in a restaurant some 15 minutes walk from my home. My friend kept texting me to say that she had arrived, did I mind if we ate in another restaurant, actually the other place was closed so should we go to an Italian restaurant etc, etc! I suspect that had I not stopped to answer all of my friend’s texts I would have reached the restaurant at least 10 minutes earlier than I in fact did! In the days before mobiles we would likely as not have met without mishap and much quicker as we wouldn’t have been messing around texting one another.
For the article regarding the incident in the supermarket please see http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2353581/Sainsburys-customer-shocked-checkout-assistant-refuses-serve-mobile.html
K Morris - Poet 