Hello, its Bea here and I have a question for you. Have you noticed that everything is smarter these days? There are smart houses, smart cars, and smart phones; just about everything is smarter. It seems that as inanimate things get smarter, people seem to get dumber by the minute. Somebody has to be inventing these things so there must be a small pocket of smart people out there. I think most of them are advertisers.
Take my cell phone, no really, I wish someone would take my cell phone. It constantly sends my text messages to the wrong contact people. It randomly dials numbers in my contact list. It cuts off calls—before I even dial! It purposely refuses to disconnect when I finish a call, causing me to be overheard saying unflattering things about people. Of course, I then have to pretend that I knew they were listening and the whole thing was a joke.
The other day I was thinking about a friend who lives in California. The phone dialed her! I hadn’t touched the phone. It was laying on the car seat beside me and I heard her voice saying hello.
This phone is very sensitive to touch. It was three months before I learned to control my breathing because, if I so much as breathed on an application, it connected me. Once the smart-ass phone connected me to the internet so many times that I needed to recharge after only one hour of use!
I’ve been using the telephone since I was five years old. The device is for talking to people who are not close at hand. I f I wanted to send a written message, I’d write a letter. If I wanted to get on the internet, I’d go to a computer where the screen is big enough that I don’t have to squint with one eye to see it. I have a perfectly good radio, so I don’t want to listen to music on my phone, or play games.
Now this is the part that shows how dumb people are getting. If all I wanted to do was talk, why didn’t I just get a plain dial-and-talk phone instead of a “smart” phone? Not likely. Everyone made me think I needed that phone. People told me that if I was driving alone and got lost, I could use the GPS; if I ran into trouble or just had a flat tire, I could call for help; and in case of an emergency I could reach 911. The list of reasons goes on and on. I had to have that phone! If not, I would be at the mercy of every calamity known to man and would be cut off from civilization without a life line. I became completely paranoid. I felt that I had no choice but to get the latest technology had to offer. The only thing is, I hate that phone!
I’m not the only dummy who fell for all the hype. It started out with advertisers making business people think that they needed a mobile phone to keep them connected to their busy lives. Soon everyone wanted to look like the busy executive on the go but who was still taking care of business. Then they convinced everyone else of the “joy” of staying connected. What do we really have to say that is that important? The clincher was when pay phones began to disappear so that you felt you had no choice but to have a cell phone.
We dummies that let smart phones run our lives shouldn’t all feel bad. Sometimes we rebel. I know recently I refused to listen to my GPS when it tried to navigate me into a river. Why in the world would I keep going when the voice on the GPS said to turn right and I was looking at a large body of water? Unfortunately some people would follow that GPS voice into hell. That’s how bad it’s gotten.
What’s even worse, many of us dummies are posting all our personal business on social networking sites. Now we realize that thanks to smart web sites, we have no personal business. Now that’s something to muse on.
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