(circa 2005)
I am sitting in the Raleigh, North Carolina airport waiting for my flight to Tampa and feeling a little bit behind the times. Thirty feet to my right a woman is click, click, clicking on a laptop computer. It appears she is taking dictation through a wireless headset of some kind, hooked up to her cell phone, transcribing something very important. Brain cells directly connected. Dead ahead and twenty feet away, there is a man wringing his fingers while talking loudly on another type of headset connected to his cell phone, which is fastened to his belt. He is pacing importantly, making stock market trades and wants everyone to know it. Two seats to his left a grandmotherly-type is in the process of dialing her cell phone for a third or fourth time. Whoever she is attempting to call must be talking to someone else on a cell phone. Frustrated, she pulls a paperback from her purse, flips a few pages, and then begins dialing again. The lure of electronics will not leave her alone. Way in the corner to my left, a businessman is typing on a laptop with one hand while clutching a cell phone to his ear with the other. He is talking a mile a minute and obviously really needs one of those fancy headsets the other folks have. I count one, two, three, four more people in my field of vision — more if I include scurrying passersby making their way to various other airport gates — who are also involved with cell phone conversations. And there’s one, two, three, four, five more travelers tapping away on their laptops at waist level sitting in these uncomfortable airport chairs.
What a busy Tuesday morning this is! The essence of pure PRODUCTIVITY is fused into this public space like rising lightning bolts from a Tesla coil, the kind that makes folks’ hair quiver and stand up on end.
Roll over, Industrial Revolution! I cannot help but wonder where these same cell phone-laptop enamored people were fifteen years ago and what they were doing back then with their hyperactive hands: was the world a less hectic place for them then?
In the time it took me to scribble the last sentence in my trusty notepad, four more cell phone-clad travelers have stepped into the Gate-17 waiting area. They are needle-stuck heroin addicts jacked into their cell phones with an ease and familiarity that is frightening. To whom are they chatting? What’s so important?
A newcomer is opening an impressive laptop two seats away from me on my left. The monitor-screen appears larger than the 21-inch one I use at home. Peripherally, I notice an Internet connection has been made; the person is checking his email. Out comes a cell phone. A busy person, indeed. An incoming email and outgoing phone conversation at the same time. No, wait — now he’s answering the email and talking at the very same time. Although I am writing as fast as I can, I feel out of touch with my ballpoint pen and pocket-sized notepad and am suffering sensory overload. If I only had a cell phone and fancy laptop I could be dictating this Simply Tim on the fly into one of those curious headsets perched on my ear, using voice recognition software that will make me sound like Stephen Hawking…
I need to get out more.
(originally published and copyrighted© 1998-2010 by Simply Tim in the Recipe du Jour news letter.)
Well, I guess that I am addicted to this now, your blog! But after reading all of the comments to this one, my mind is reelling – I could not handle of all that crap! I too have a cell phone just for emergenies. Or when I need to get ahold of my daughers to go to work with me….
I am paying for one daughter’s phone and it costs me 74$ a month until she gets a job………..4 yrs and school and looking. why don’t I get a second phone on her service – b/c I have 593 minutes on a Trac Phone that I haven’t used. One daughter says, why don’t you keep it on to let us talk to you and I tell her, if you want to call me, call the home phone. I don’t turn it on unless I need to and hate those people in the stores shopping while listening to someome telling them what to buy………..make a list.
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Lots of times I leave the house without my cell phone. I leave an old fashioned note on the table for the family. I like being disconnected.
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15 years ago before all this technology, which I’m guilty of possessing like anyone else, I was more productive.
I’m deaf, but keep in touch with texting, but only when I feel like checking it. Even so, the my tech toys, the text phone, computer, video phone and laptop, take a big bite into time I would have spent doing something more productive. So I make a point of having at least one “unplugged” day a week.
It’s really irritating to me to see hearing zombies walking around talking on their cell phones every minute of the day. Deaf people require eye contact to communicate, and there is none anymore while people are talking on their cell phones and staring into space. (and bumping into you because they expect you to hear them coming and get out of the way.. how rude!!)
One other thing.. it used to be that whenever I saw someone talking to him/herself, I knew the person had a mental problem. Not anymore! Those bluetooth headsets aren’t always visible! Or… hmm… maybe it’s just that MORE people have a mental problem now? Like technology addiction?
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I consider bluetooth contraptions as one of the rudest inventions to date. It seems like the person yakking away to the air looks at me like I’m intruding on their privacy when, in actuality, they are intruding on mine.
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I know exactly what you mean about lap-tops and cell phones. Yes, I own one and I try to limit my use of it in public. I think I am in the minority though.
I ride the CTA buses in Chicago and have heard some conversations that are totally off-the-wall. Nothing like someone sitting down next to you and having a cell phone conversation. They talk loudly and sometimes rudely.
Do they know that the people on the bus can hear every word uttered? Do they even care about people knowing the private business??? I think not.
It can be so bad until the bus has a recording that asks people to be courteous while using their cell phones. You have to remind people of all ages, cultures and backgrounds to be nice just like parents have been teaching children for decades. I guess some people need extra teaching or extra mothers to remind them of basic human dignity.
I would like to know what people used to do in the “olden days”. Oh, I remember – – they waited until they got home to their telephones.
Maybe they should go back to those times.
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You are quite the observer and reporter. While it was and still is common for me to bring a good book to read while awaiting flights, trains, buses, motor vehicle maintenance/repairs, I now have the cell glued to my ear, too. I find that the extensive time I spend in my car seems diminished if I can chat with a friend. I’ve written articles for publication while using my laptop at the gate waiting area. Even had a couple of youngsters ask to use my USB port to re-charge whatever device they were using. The electronic age is inescapable. Whatever happened to naps?????
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Well, by golly, I take a nap every day. But I prefer to call it a “siesta”, a wonderful European concept that works for me.
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I take a daily nap, “siesta”, too. It’s good for the heart and allows me to watch TV in the evening, otherwise I can’t stay awake.
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Yep, I take a nap everyday, maybe even two on some days. I don’t care what anybody wants to call it! It’s a great revitalizer!
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Very dangerous using a cell phone in the car to while away the time. I have lost count of the close calls I’ve encountered by people who are talking on a cell phone. Long rides in a car? That’s why cars have radios.
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Oh, don’t get me started on that!! Once, I watched one woman ahead of me in an Escort wander to the left, hit the divider curb, and bounce back down into her lane. In the process, her muffler and tailpipe fell off (jumped off?) and were left behind on the center divider. I passed her (very cautiously), and she was just merrily driving along laughing and talking on her cell phone as if nothing had happened. She didn’t even notice me staring at her. Wonder if she even knew or noticed that her exhaust system just got scrapped?
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Gives new meaning to Timothy Leary’s “Turn on, tune in, drop out” doesn’t it?
Know that a LOT of us are still living our lives in real-time. Some of us figure “if it’s important, they’ll call back”.
I personally love the quiet moments alone in the car, running my errands or heading towards an adventure….with my “emergency-only” cell phone, fully charged, turned off in a pocket of my purse. It never rings.
And for that, I am truly grateful.
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I sympathize with you, Tim and another poster whose name currently eludes me – sorry. I find these technophiles to be tiresome show-offs. They talk louder than is necessary but sometimes they THINK they have to be heard over the surrounding and mindless DIN.
I only use my cellphone for emergencies and keep it silently in my pocket on “vibrate”. My friends know not to call me unless it is really, REALLY important because they know I like to sit and observe and THINK.
These self-important blowhards who want everyone to know how important THEIR business is are pitiful. They really must get a life and not depend on the opinions and attentions of perfect strangers to feel validated. I rarely fly now because the hassle of customs is vexatious but when I go by train or bus and am at the station waiting for the transportation to arrive I find “people-watching” to be endlessly fascinating.
How do persons think Charles Dickens or Anthony Trollope got the ideas for their exquisite portraits of Victorian society? They did this by OBSERVING and noting down what they SAW and OVER-HEARD.
Thus endeth the sermonette.
tcw
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I have a cell phone in my pocket for emergencies because it’s so hard to find a pay phone these days. I hear they’re all going to disappear. I see folks in the grocery store talking a mile a minute on their bluetooth while they shop. Everyone is so busy talking to people outside the store they can’t greet other shoppers or the clerk. Clerks don’t have to be friendly anymore because they’re ignored if they are. We are too automated. Life is too fast. Slow down. Smile at each other. Take a walk. Go to the park. Leave the phone and laptop home. How did we ever manage without them? Just as well, thank you.
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Almost makes one appreciate a doctor’s office where – at least in mine – cell phones have to be shut off. Fine day when a visit to the doctor’s office is more pleasant than a plane trip!!!
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Nah, Tim you don’t need all that junk. You accomplished as much as ‘they’ did with their hundreds of dollars of electronics and still had time to ‘people watch’. (my FAV thing to do in the whole wide world). You can’t buy entertainment like real life!!
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