On Phones and Bruising One's Self

I have been known to rail against technology, yet I use it on quite a high level, with music production and even as a teacher. It's good and it's bad. Trent Reznor points out, in the film Sound City, that the current tech tools have enabled musicians to do things we could never do before but that it has not increased the number of great albums being made. In short, no amount of tech is going to make the mediocre, brilliant or the bad, good, in any discipline.

I am in a constant state of evaluating tech and its effects on me. When it affects me negatively, I eliminate or control its influence. My Facebook use is reduced, at present, by about 80%. I feel like a new man, for more reasons than I have time to explain right now.  Social media is no longer on my phone and...my phone is not always at my side.

I'll wait for the cacophony or world-wide gasps to die down before I continue.

Whether literally or figuratively, people do gasp at that idea, even as they panic and give themselves bruises during the self-pat-down-of-doom when they realize they have left home without their Precious. Because, here's the thing: The people around me expect me to have my phone on me at all times, whether they are friends, family, or professional colleagues. They all need to stop.

We each need to draw the line, for ourselves.

The other day, I was essentially given the cold shoulder  (no pun intended) for not having had my phone on my while I was shoveling snow.

Why do people think that they have a right to my attention whenever they want it? If they want to carry their phones at all times, they sure can do so. But I choose not to. Right now for instance, I am not sure where in the house it is. This morning, I drank two cups of coffee in silence -- without my phone; no Words with Friends; no Doodle Jump; no weather updates.

When I was a kid -- and into my adult years -- if I was not in the house, you would not get me on the phone. Way back in the dark past, you couldn't even leave a message for me, so, if you missed me, you missed me. (You might have been able to leave a message with my Dad, but, chances are he was working out voicing for the sax section on a big band arrangement and probably never really realized who he was talking to, let along remember a message for his kid.)

I get it. Paradigms shift. But, at some point, each of us needs to "dig in" and hold to the ideas that help life make sense to us. It just does not make sense to me that I need to be immediately at everyone's beck. I get to be left alone when I want to be, even as a professional. In my profession, people don't die if I don't get a call.

Are we all really so deluded as to our own "special" self-importance by all of this tech celebrity that is available to us for only a short "sign-up" for a social media program? (Heck -- what sign-up process? Just click the blue box to sign on with Facebook and weave yourself more claustrophobically into the heavy damp tapestry of the Interweb...) Is it all ego? -- "he needs to be available for me and I need to be available to others because I am so important"?  Well, I just ain't that important, and that feels good. And neither are you.

I'll tell you though...tech does have, as I said, its advantages. These days, if I don't want to talk to you I can look at my phone and ignore you. I can even -- oh, so therapeutically -- press a button that flat-out says: "IGNORE." In the old days, I just had to pick up the phone and wince when I realized it was you. That's progress.

Facebook Just Wants to Listen -- Like A Good Friend Would...

Read THIS if you don't mind. It would seem Facebook wants to record the ambient noise around you through the microphone on your iPhone or Andriod phone.

Oh, sure...it's voluntary. You can choose not to let them. No one is forcing you.

The horror ir that they are actually arrogant enough to ask and that there are those who will allow it.

I shouldn't be surprised that we live in a society in which anyone would choose to allow this. And I won't be surprised when that same society has signed away every last bit of its own privacy voluntarily...until they voluntarily sign away the right to choose to whether volunteer or not.

My advice, if you care...take Facebook off of your phone, at least. I did. They can't do it through your computer. Not yet.

We're like meat under the tenderizing hammer...with each blow, we get softened to the idea of living in full-view of anyone who cares to watch. "They only want to watch us so that they can personalize our Internet experience..."

We're so trusting. It brings a tear to my eye.

Parenting By Paranoia?

For the "the world is changing" file:

I could make this a much better story if I gave you the details, but I have a policy of protecting my sons' privacy. I'll tell a story or here about them, if it is either flattering or neutral, but I generally don't get into anything too personal. I respect them and I have respected them since the day they were born. I have a feeling (or at least a fervent hope) that this respect will be sensed and returned as they get older...

Anyway, I will let this post suffer in quality by not giving you the details, for that reason. Let it suffice to say that one of my sons is in a position in which he is being teased. (No big alarm, here -- it happens; I'm not going to call in the SWAT teams, as is the policy, now, in American schools.) I gave him advice. I pointed out that I think what he sees as his friends having fun with him is actually them setting him up for ridicule. You'd agree, I think, but we will have to leave it at that.

Brassai

Despite the low alarm nature of this, last night it was mentioned that one of his friends is video taping. It's nothing criminal. It's just something silly. But you know how cruel kids are, without video-taped evidence of goofiness.

Will someone help me with this? Here I go again feeling sorry that I brought kids into this world. How do you explain to kids the dangers of social media and of the attached lack of privacy? Worse, how do you convince them it is a problem in a world in which they are growing up? -- in which (at least, to me) nightmarish surveillance is the norm?

Blinding the Watchers

Okay, I'm drawing the line. I will not purchase an E-reader, ever. Don't buy me one for Christmas, either. Please.

I know what you are thinking: Here goes another technophobic moron who can't accept change. I'm not afraid of technology. In fact, I embrace it in many aspects of my life, from music to the workplace to -- well, blogging. No, it's not the technology I'm afraid of, it's people and their potential uses of such power.

I am also petrified by the ongoing loss of privacy in our world. Worse than losing privacy, we are losing our fear of losing it. Privacy is starting to not matter, especially to young people, based on my observations. Because of this, we do nothing to prevent its theft, and then we get upset when someone gathers info that we don't want him to have.

So, don't fear technology, fear the way it allows you to become, as old Bilbo says, in The Lord of the Rings, (although with a different slant) "like butter spread over too much bread." Elements of your identity are being spread all over the Internet. Are you controlling them? Do you care? Do you care, but too late?

Things to consider not doing: