The Ancients must be laughing at us!

You've kind of hit the nail on the head here. Even some of the early participants in social networks, like Sean Parker at Facebook have disavowed what social media has become. The need for the dopamine rush is part of the problem, to be sure. And the social fragmentation has been exploited by those in power for evil purposes.

 

Log in or Sign up to hide this ad.

I love the internet I look up facts on coins, auctions, historical writeups....all fantastic. Best thing is that with your computer you can link up with any auction in the world, bid live, whats a better rush then to win your coin. I remember, last Januarys Spink auction. My dream coin was slated for 10:00AM, I set there waiting for it. My proxy bid was 5K/ previous examples had sold in 12-15K range. So, when my coin came up, highest bid was 5200US. I bid 5400/ then came the magic words going/ going....gone. A heart pounding 10 seconds/ but the coin was mine All this because of technology. Smartphones are used mostly for mindless things like taking a photo of your restaurant meal and posting it on facebook, really? Or back and forth texting about trivial gossip. Of course it can be used for business transactions, emergency calls etc too. I know, many of my lawn clients always wonder why I am unavaliable while working. I just explain, I have a job to do, and I do not carry a cellphone....end of story.
John

 

Smartphones are a great invention. People are just too stupid to use them responsibly.

 

Well, I really like Coin Talk, and I spend an awful lot of time looking at coins on line and on eBay...but not on a phone. Something about them make me nervous - sometimes at work, or walking to work, or anywhere, I feel I'm the only person actually looking up.

But I'm middle aged and like to exaggerate the past - I tell my nephews we were bored a lot when I was a kid. I like going into a spiel about how we had to make our own fun out of dirt and sticks and pieces of twine. "What's twine?" they ask...

Now when I really want to scare youngsters about the old days, I show them my current (no kidding) phone:

 

I bet if you showed that to a young kid they wouldn't even recognize it as a phone! "What is that? A garage door opener?" LOL! I was on a similar phone until about a year ago, finally got a smartphone however.

Amen. I make it a point to not be available all the time. Half the time I don't have it on me, I think my eyes have been on my phone screen for maybe 30 seconds total today.

Here are some things I like about my phone:

1. When I need directions I can find them quickly and have a robot lady voice read them to me as a drive down the road. Thanks robot lady!

2. I can get in touch of my kids when ever I want, and there is hell to pay if they don't pick up. When I was in high school, that wasn't a way for my parents to cramp my style!! LOL! WOOOOOOOOOOOOO! 80's were awesome!!!!!

3. I can call (or text, even better) my wife when she is at the store when and tell her to pick me up stuff so I don't have to go.

4. When I'm debating with a friend what year Led Zeppelin released Physical Graffiti, we can quickly resolve this. I told you it was 1975 Jim!! Thanks Wikipedia!




Things I'm not sure if I like or not....

1. My wife used to complain that I spent to much time on my PC. Since she spends every minute of her waking leisure time with a phone in her hand, I don't hear this compliant anymore. I'm actually the one telling her she should probably get off the tech for a while! LOL!

2. Remember when people used to say "I wish I had a camera with me", no one says that anymore. Pros and cons there.


Things I don't like about phones...

1. People talking on them loudly in public.

2. People listening to audio on phones loudly.

Here is a coin that is somewhat of a technological marvel for the time. This is a coin minted in the UK for use in France during a period in time where there was a shortage of small change. Matthew Boulton minted this coin using his new fanged steam engine! I'm sure there was quite a debate about the use of this new technology and it effect on society at the time!

 

I would rather have this (which I do) then a smartphone any day!

 

But really, forget smartphones. Just imagine if Marcus Aurelius and Faustina had access to vaccines and hospitals!

 

Same. I reluctantly upgraded to a smartphone a year ago.

 

From a young perspective, having never not known about the internet, I surprisingly don't feel addicted to it. Online likes don't necessarily define me. I could wake up someday with every mainstream social media platform gone and feel just as ok as I did the day before, given that I only have one that I rarely use. I kid you not, one time I sat down at a table of my peers and I was the only one who didn't have a phone out. Yesterday I was driving home and the person in front of me was clearly on their phone, going about as slow as Christmas. On the other hand, all of my photographs come from my phone. I usually will look at here on my phone. It's a mixed bag.

 

Tools are tools, the question is how you use them. You can use a hammer to build a house, you can use a hammer to kill someone. Today's technologies add a lot to life when used well. When people become slaves to their technologies, then we have a problem. Here's a betting proposition: when are we going to see the first cell phone on a coin?

 

Oh, dear, I should not get started on this, but here are my 3 folles worth. I excerpt this from an interview my university library conducted with me a few months ago.
CELLULAR PHONES — and people on them all the time. I first noticed this phenomenon on the Tube in London in the spring and summer of 2001. People were holding these gizmos all the time and silently staring at them as the train hurled itself through the bowels under the City, just as I would meditate upon a miniature portrait of a loved one. It is an aspect of modern life with which I find myself most at odds. I do indeed carry a flip phone, I believe it is called, but I do so to placate my wife, who worries that without it, if I am kicked by my horse at the barn, or shoot myself in the foot at the firing range, I will die alone and un-helped.

Everywhere I walk on campus, nearly everyone is on a cellular phone – 2 people walking together are at the same time communicating with other parties via the things they hold in their hand. This is like being on a dinner date with one girl, while holding the hand of the young woman at the adjacent table. While this may be fine for some, it is not my way. It seems as if everyone has a phone attached to the palm of their hand by superglue. I walk across campus to my office at 6:50 AM of a weekday; the person walking in front of me is on the phone, talking animatedly to someone. To whom at that hour? At that time of the morning, everyone I know is either asleep, as I too should be, driving to work, or getting kids off to school. And so it goes, everywhere I go. I (and I would capitalize “I” for emphasis, were not the first person personal pronoun in English already capitalized) eschew the notion of being connected all the time. When my cellular phone rings, I cringe - then I ignore it. While at work, I must talk with people all day. When I am home, I am grateful to hear little of human voices, save that of my wife, which I must include. I prefer a book on the table to my left, my dog Tetris on my lap, and one of my other 2 dogs in the chair to my right; WE communicate by constant eye contact and smiles. And such communication is enough.

At our university several students have been struck by cars, because lost in their phones, they stupidly crossed the streets without paying attention. And university police have urged students to limit their cell phone usage while walking out alone at night because there have been instances of mugging – the children are just not paying attention to their surroundings. I should be more sympathetic, but important life lessons are sometimes taught the hard way.

 

The social fragmentation that @ancient coin hunter referenced is an extremely important issue. Instead of developing a well-rounded understanding of all sides of an issue, vetted through real-life polite discussion and idea-bouncing, the proliferation of quarantined online "echo-chambers" for individuals to have their inaccurate subjective beliefs reaffirmed and crystallized by a like-minded minority of the population instills a solipsistic intellectual laziness in people, making it easier to double-down and insult others for not believing in "Flat Earth", "Reptilian Illuminati" or other silliness that wasn't really an issue decades ago. Generally speaking, it is easier and instinctively preferable to "be right" than to be wrong and then get enlightened with facts, and technology makes it much easier to construct a protective bubble against the "threat" of one's own objective ignorance.

Another extremely alarming problem is the damage done to children raised by screens. I'm 31 and remember life before the Internet and Google, but now millions of children are being raised by addicted adults who spend more time focused on their own phone than on the emotional or interactional needs of their toddlers. Young children are exceptionally observant of the cues provided by their parents, and if the adults are spending 8+ hours a day zombified by technology that is precisely what the children will emulate as natural behavior.

Studies are only now beginning to come out demonstrating that children handed an ipad or smartphone when they clamor for attention or stimulation by tech-addict parents are becoming severely damaged in their emotional and social development, such that they can't recognize or respond to different facial expressions and the underlying emotional state being communicated. Otherwise normal children raised by screens are shown to possess social/emotional intelligence deficits similar to those with Autism in times past, and the consequences of this tragedy haven't even begun to materialize. They're now offering basic "socialization" classes/seminars for new college students (forget about formal cotillion classes LOL!), but that's nothing compared to the problems society will face when the socially and emotionally stunted toddlers raised by screens become adults and stumble their way into procreating themselves, and so on. I'd wager that we haven't even begun to see the damage to the human mind and society wrought by this slavish reliance on tech, and since the average global IQ is 2-digits I don't really reserve much hope for the future of the species. Maybe the Amish got it right, haha.

 

If you'll pardon the pun, you hit the bull's eye with your contribution, plumbata. Well said!

 

Hear Hear!

 

For the younger generation, it's all about the smart phone now - it's a required accessory, or maybe a security blanket

 

It's not a new problem, calling while driving

 

LOL, I posted this before, but I still get a chuckle from it:


ANCIENT SELFIES

 

haha..i wuz just thinking about this meme.."i can hear you BOTH!"