This past weekend my wife and I got new smart phones. It’s a
ritual we are accustomed to doing every two years, and it was hastened by our
one-year-old daughter putting my wife’s phone in a cup of coffee.
We took our brood on a shopping adventure to our local wireless
store and purchased the latest Android phone. We picked out our phones and
accessories and I remained at the store while my wife took our three daughters
to visit stores with less expensive breakables.
By the time the store closed an hour and a half later, my
phone was not done transferring so I had to keep my old phone close to it as I
searched for the rest of my family. We hadn’t arranged to meet at any specific
location but I’d simply start walking around the Bay Terrace Shopping Center
and hope to see them. I couldn’t text my wife to find out where they were, I
had her phone stuffed in a shopping bag along with extra charging cables and
other accessories.
While I may have once taken pride in being somewhat of a
Luddite, there is no stopping the increasing use of technology. You can’t put
the genie back in the bottle. I was the last person among my circles of friends
to get a cell phone and one of the last to get a smart phone. I’m not as technologically
connected as my younger peers at work. I have come to embrace technology even
if I use it more sparingly than others. It’s a matter not only of etiquette
(sending a text message if you are going to be late) but increasingly of safety
(knowing who can see our children’s photos on social media).
I refuse to be one of the zombies I see slowing
down foot traffic in the city, and those slothful grown children are not the
product of technology but rather bad character and upbringing. If mobile phone technology had never
been invented, no doubt these self-centered techno rubes would be finding other
ways to make our lives more difficult.
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The people who are abusing smart phones and gaming technology
are inheritors of the slack-jawed mindlessness of those who abused television
and less advanced video games years ago.
Technology does not cause any moral rot any more than it
creates virtue. Throughout the centuries there have been two schools of thought
that have reacted to technology that have been totally wrong: those who think
that it will bring about the downfall of mankind and those that thought that it
would bring a new era of virtue and help create a more equitable society.
As I searched for my family, I came across a man who was
standing idle on the sidewalk. He looked at me as I looked across the parking
lot and struck up a conversation, asking me if I was bored and commenting that
this part of Queens is boring and Manhattan is where it’s at. I made polite
conversation, but noted we were not far from interesting nightlife closer to NorthernBoulevard and that the
shopping center had a movie theater.
The man was odd and too eager to speak with strangers. He
was not threatening at all, just awkward and sad. I did not ask him if he had a
smart phone with him but if he did I did not see it. Such a device would have
helped him find something to do. Queens does not have the same social scene as
Manhattan, but that’s no matter. No one in the five boroughs has any reason to
be bored.
And someone by themselves at a shopping center on a Saturday
night striking up a conversation with me has social issues holding them back
more than geographical challenges.
But no matter, a few minutes later I found my family at a
frozen yogurt shop, and we enjoyed some brain-freezing treats before heading
back home. My wife and I had to feed our kids and get them to bed before
spending time with our phones getting them set up properly. We’re almost done.
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