Without advocating the progression and integration of technology into our lives, the greatest mind our species has ever seen would be silent: Stephen Hawking.

If a child were born with a heart disease and it’s heart failed, would you not give it an ICD (Implantable cardioverter-defibrillator)? Or would you let the child die? I’m sure that any sane, moral person would choose the former option.

We are now beginning to integrate technology into our very bodies. It is and always has been an inevitable step in our evolution. We will become more than human, just as we became more than apes.

Seriously, though, you said what I wanted to so damn well I can only say amen!

For that three year old a lot of good a cell phone will do at the age of twenty three as the you know what is hitting the fan. Anyway microwaveing your brain doesn’t seem like the answer.

Am I a slave to my phone? No. The very idea is nonsensical. I always carry it, and it’s always on (although usually on silent). What does that mean in practice? It means that I am never uninformed as to any social opportunity that might present itself. Party? Trip to the park? Poker game? Clubbing, art exhibition, cinema? I know what and when, and I’ll be on time.

I have been a student in two different towns in the UK in the past few years, and I grew up in another, different city. I have good friends scattered throughout the country, and I cannot afford train or bus fares to go and visit them all anywhere near as often as I would like. But they are always just a phone call away. If it weren’t for my phone, I would imagine that plenty of these relationships would have fallen apart. Writing a letter or an email is all very well and good, but it does not compare to hearing the voice of people you care about, and having a real conversation, in real time.

If there is an emergency, then there is no delay in calling an ambulance, or calling the cops. Thankfully, it’s rare I find myself in this position, but it seems undeniable that mobile phones save lives.

I always have a dictaphone in my pocket. I always have a camera in my pocket. I always have a guitar tuner, a calendar, a stopwatch and a torch in my pocket. They are all in my phone. These are incredibly useful tools for my day-to-day life.

You talk of people being chained to their machines, as if it was a one-way relationship, but the point is that there is someone else on the other end of that line. There is someone else replying to those texts. It is a social tool, before anything else. It enables conversations that couldn’t otherwise take place. It streamlines the making of social arrangements. Perhaps 50% of my mobile phone use is spent organising meeting up with people in the real world. It is a means to that end. The bulk of the rest is spent talking to people who, for whatever reason, I am unable to meet up with in the real world. The reality for most young people nowadays is that it is cheaper to own a mobile phone than to own a landline, even before convenience is taken into account.

No offence, but this article really does read as if it is written by someone who is not just a little old-fashioned, but has been completely left behind by a short spell of technological progress. If people are using their phones in a rude manner, that’s because they are inconsiderate people. If children are spending all day in front of a screen, that’s because no-one has shown them any other way to spend their time. The problem is never the technology, it is how people choose to use it.

And if I ever want to disconnect from the network, the manufacturers were kind enough to include an ‘off’ button.

Does anyone else get this message when getting up the link to the site instead of the list of articles for the month and the number of comments in brackets? It is meaningless to me.

Fatal error: Allowed memory size of 94371840 bytes exhausted (tried to allocate 16 bytes) in /home/.pookahontas/dvoice07/dissidentvoice.org/wp-includes/post.php on line 3246

Does anyone else get this message when getting up the link to the site instead of the list of articles for the month and the number of comments in brackets? It is meaningless to me.

Fatal error: Allowed memory size of 94371840 bytes exhausted (tried to allocate 16 bytes) in /home/.pookahontas/dvoice07/dissidentvoice.org/wp-includes/post.php on line 3246

Although uncomfortable at times, moments of being by one’s self(whether in a crowded room or on a mountain) are an essential part of growth. Marketeers would love to pull every single string. Let’s hope that some of the new and next generations of us earthlings is wise and a step up.

My sister and I were getting ready to watch the fireworks during a local 4th of July celebration, when we (sadly) spotted a lady walking at a hurried pace, clutching her baby in one hand, and her phone in the other. She was giving more attention to the phone than the child, whose young head (which should have been adequately supported, at that young age) was bouncing all over the place. The woman was totally oblivious with all attention on her device.

Do not assume. Some of us do much more than rant in cyberspace.

But I know what you are saying. I have yet to see a conversation that is organizing anything, doing anything productive. In fact, what I see is that people cling to their baggage and identity related issues and refuse to unite under any umbrella.

The focus seems to be on highlighting differences, drawing lines in the sand, and focussing on issues that are far away. I am in the USA and I my country really needs to unite to put governing back into We THe People’s hands. But, it is more popular to decry the constitution and Declaration as a tool of the elite than to own it, and exercise it. But, it’s the biggest tool we have to hold others accountable, because everything our leaders are doing is a violation of constitution, and the focus is on denouncing it as part of the problem.

Big irony that many posters would vote for Nader and McKinney, both of whom are adamant about Constitution and restoring its integrity.

Peace, Resistance, Hope,
Melissa

But they don’t? on this mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam we human’s have been pushing pushing pushing and now we are about to get pushed back how far is the question.

People choose methods of communication for convenience, and cellular phones/instant messaging technology provide a means for us to catch up with friends. Statistically speaking, one could find individuals with similar likes and differences in the same community … but what about when people relocate? Should we discard our college best friends because they graduate and move to Japan while we’re stuck stateside? While handwritten letters are nice, E-mail, text messaging, and phone conversations prove the more reliable communication methods. What about people of minority faiths who move somewhere that has no local community? Unlike 200 years ago, we have ways to stay in contact and make the distance more manageable.

Granted, I think that cell phones do not belong in many settings, so that’s not entirely a generational issue. To put it bluntly … the majority of people in this world are rude and obnoxious. In the 1980s, the hip way to be obnoxious involved getting on public transit with a boom box. Now, rude people talk on their cell phones in restaurants. In 2030, they will annoy everyone by jacking into virtual reality ports during funerals.

Good point about inequality existing regardless of technology. -and YES! Who’s fault could it be to model greed and perpetual immaturity? We so-called adults often don’t like the mirror that youth holds up in front of us. So, we shift the blame . . . and repeat the phrase every generation before has: “kids these days!”

Peace,
Melissa

Mulga, it is funny how people who did not have their individual rights, personalities, or even rights to their body and mind recognized still managed to have a radically unequal society without cell phones, the internet, or electricity in virtually all of history before the 20th century. Indeed, the most equal societies in the world right now are not free from cellphones. I’m sure you do think that the political movements of the young are somehow ignorant and greedy; but we shall see which generation really believes more in equality.

I mention this because she was convinced that her cell phone usage contributed directly to her brain tumor. Now I very reluctantly accepted one as a gift and use it incredibly sparingly, but to see people drive with them, ride horses with them, jog, go to the movies, gather with others while all are on them is to see not some innocent new use of technology, but to witness an entire culture forget what it means to relate to each other except through this medium. Which will probably help cause some diseases and make somebody a lot of money.

But the message here is simple: even the “debates” had here on DV are part of the problem, where people “gather” in cyberspace to rant over events that have no relationship to their lives, about people they will never see, to people they will never meet… while next to them, in their neighborhoods, churches, unions, and workplaces are dozens of “real” people they could get together with and create all that change they scream about here. But they don´t.

Disgusting what is seen as a bump for the GDP!

Run for the cure? That foundation rakes in tons of money for more pharma and symptom chasing. How about we address what we know are causes?
How might that affect the GDP?

Peace,
Melissa