While browsing the ever-wider world web today, I came across a story about IBM’s patent of a sort of “Facebook Remote Control.” It was appalling. Do we seriously need more single-purpose devices that will enable us to sit around more wasting more time than we already do? Does anyone really need to seclude themselves from the world even more to publish their lives on yet another teen-infested network? Must we really always be connected to the net? Read on for my ramble concerning a dark side of technology.
The Issue: Efficiency or Lethargy
There are two basic sides to this issue of the myriad of devices and applications in the common technological market today. They are efficiency and lethargy in a nutshell. Efficiency covers the devices and applications that help businesses and individuals to basically do things better and/or faster. This includes office programs, server technology, many communication platforms, and other useful stuff. Lethargy devices and applications, on the other hand, are usually targeted towards individuals and “helps” them to waste time and/or money and is sometimes disguised as an efficiency item. This includes entertainment, still many communication platforms, and other things– often accessory to another greater item.
These sides aren’t black and white, though; many gadgets and apps can arguably be placed in either category depending on a person’s situation. What truly makes an item one of efficiency or lethargy is what a person chooses to do with it.
Let’s take the iPhone for example. A very popular piece of equipment. Its initial design promotes both voice and text communication, and many I’m sure use its audio properties to “whistle while they work.” Its constant Internet connectivity combines online applications such as email and other apps like Google Docs with mobility to make it a valuable asset to many business employees and even students. Individuals can use the iPhone’s many features and thousands of downloadable apps for their own purposes. This is where it gets shady. When does a useful multi-purpose device like the iPhone or even your general desktop or laptop cross the border of efficaciousness into the dark and sticky realms of lethargy and nonproductive wasted life? Just think about that silently to yourself for now. Don’t raise your hand just yet.
So, with all of the hot air of mine boiled out, there’s an issue between people utilizing technology efficiently and people utilizing technology… stupidly. Also, despite people’s choices on how to use what’s given to them, there still are some “useful” devices and applications that are just really useless when it comes down to it. Can we all agree on those points?
Where IBM’s Facebook Remote Control patent ties in is that it seems an awful lot like one of those “useful” devices that have no true use. If it’s built and sold (it’s not been confirmed whether IBM will actually build said device), it will enable TV-addicts to discuss “with one’s friends the juicy bits of a favorite show or the latest television program” online, not necessarily just on Facebook, “without the viewer having to leave the broadcast receiver of the television.” This is a device that looks efficient because “I simply have to talk to Dalayna next door about what House just did!” This is an example of when we allow an object of technology (television programs and the discussion of such) regulate what we have to do.
(More) of My Opinion on the Subject
In my very humble opinion, it’s too much of a temptation to allow ourselves to let technology take the place of too many manual labors or fill up the time we should be using to make our lives full and rich with empty entertainment and too much connectivity. We don’t need to be able to discuss the juicy details of the latest love fantasies from television with our friends the instant it’s aired.
We don’t even need the ability to turn up the volume without standing up. Remotes are a curse upon mankind; I already griped about this a while back on my old personal blog. Remotes, music players, smartphones, netbooks, Facebook, YouTube, and whatever else are all very nice and can be used in a good way, but how much do we really need? How “easy” does life need to be made?
The world as a whole needs to take a look at itself and see what’s become of the human race. People are becoming addicted to technology that “just makes it easier.” We need to watch out, or we’ll eventually end up like the people from Wall-E and the kids who freak out about losing their WoW subscriptions. We need to have the individual responsibility to be able to determine when we’re using our technology in an efficient, useful, positive way and when we’re really just making excuses to waste time and get out of work we ought to be doing anyway.
How About You?
I’ve spouted off a whole lot of my own garbage, now, and it’s not really important. What do you think about the rising issue of efficient/lethargic technology and how it’s being abused by quite a lot of people of all ages? Or is it an issue? I’d like to know what it’s like in other countries– I’ve only been able to witness what it’s like in the United States.
Do we seriously need more single-purpose devices that will enable us to sit around more wasting more time than we already do?
No.
Does anyone really need to seclude themselves from the world even more to publish their lives on yet another teen-infested network?
Yes. Any ‘teen-infested’ network by definition requires teens to ‘publish their lives on [the] network’
Must we really always be connected to the net?
Only on the net would an inane rant about the adoption of a more effective communication and participation medium – aka ‘the net’ – receive any kind of attention.
Let me ask you these question: If you feel the net is negatively impacting society why are you not publishing a newspaper about the problems of the net? Don’t you find it a tiny bit ironic that your railing against the very medium which facilitates your ability to rail? Is it not logical, given the inane pursuits of humanity through the ages that a new medium would simply enable yet a different kind of inanity? Do you realize we were fat long before the net came along? Do you realize television, and the radio before it, was infinitely less participatory and hence more inane then virtually any of the pursuits you complain about?
Edited 2009-09-01 02:47 UTC
Meeting in person and talking is still more effective than using the net.
I’m not fat, I’m big boned!
I could rephrase that and say:
“Must we really always be watching the television?”
“Must we really always be talking about television show characters if they were real people?”
I’ve got a few more choice words that I’d love to insert into that phrase about contemporary society. The amount of television I might watch in a week is around 3-4 hours, most of my time spent reading books, updating my blog or twitter or going for a walk to get some fresh air. For me, using the internet is something I do in lieu of watching television, just as I choose to read in lieu of watching television.
If you want to know what is pathetic, those who have designated time of being ‘on the net’ as if it were some sort of triumphant achievement that needs to be demarcated on the weekly schedule. Imagine if you replaced ‘on the net’ with ‘on the telephone’ – talk about individuals elevating the internet to something of a religious pilgrimage that they take each week.
Its amazing how you insert “single-purpose” when if you just removed that to result in the following phrase:
Maybe that is the question to ask; when I hear stories of people texting 12,000 times per month, I really have to ask myself whether people are just whimsically floating through life, filling up some gap with child like amusements till the grim reaper arrives at the door. Filling their heads, keeping their mind occupied from having to face the inevitable – that they’re going to die one day and all of the superficial crap they’re indulging in doesn’t mean a thing.
Edited 2009-09-01 04:04 UTC
Have we ever really done differently? Most people just fill up their lives with whatever mundane, nearly meaningless tasks they can, be it work or for play. If we didn’t have TV or Internet, we’d just sit around at general stores, talking about the weather or what Farmer Joe did last week.
We aren’t really designed to be working at maximum mental capacity for long periods of time. If you choose to spend a lot of time working hard, good for you. That’s not a natural condition, though.
Everything is linked to everything else – the society, the politics, the economy – everything is linked to that brain killing attitude to life; avoid work, thinking, introspection, self analysis and original thought at all cost. Be a good little consumer sheep, keep running on the treadmill of earning money, purchasing crap that advertisers claim will ‘change your life’ then at the ripe old age or 80, you can look around at your house filled to the rafters with crap and have a smile on your face knowing you bought everything you ‘had to buy’.
I don’t know about you but when I’m on my death bed, I want to be able to look back on my life and see that I’ve developed as a person from position of ignorance into person who never lost a love for learning and developing and had an impact on family and friend.
What is this “television” you speak of? 😉
Seriously, I gave up television 15 years ago or more. I watch, perhaps, 3-4 hrs per year.
The only reason I watch television is for the re-runs of MASH and maybe the occasional Brit Comedy. Most television these days are geared to the lowest common denominator – one would have to kill several million brain cells on a regular basis just to find what they broadcast during prime time as being entertaining.
Edited 2009-09-01 04:23 UTC
http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.com/2008/01/26/28-not-having-a-tv/
Like commenting on news items on OSNews?
It’s my newspaper(digg,osnews,google news, science daily and so many more), sometimes my library, my tv(youtube, hulu, crackle and others), my radio(jamendo, pandora, aol music, last fm etc.), and all connected conveniently by a little blue cable into my laptop(it doesn’t move much).
That being said as much as I love the internet I spent most of my day today in college then an hour at a state park and about 3 hours on reading(for school). So while I agree the Internet takes up a good part of my day it does because I can do so much here.
Edited 2009-09-01 04:10 UTC
Just below the article we see several links including twitter and facebook. These are the best illustrations to the fact that the the “dark” and the “light” natures of any matter are not separated with a line with some thikness property, but they overlap.
Social network is a place where all the somehow shadowed (or even forbidden) news items break out, where the real self explanation and collective mind instance find their homes.
But the main use of social networks is still chatting with people about the things that either:
1. You wouldn’t talk in a real life because they mean nothing for You and for them;
2. You’ll tell them in person anyway.
It’s just a waste of time, the said ‘dark’ nature, isn’t it?
It is, but on the other hand this is the way for person to dissolve stress, to stop for a while and think about something and etc. Social networks offload the the real life for another world that can help the person to find some other ways or simply break free from the situation [s]he’s exposed to in a real life. That’s ‘light’ nature, isn’t it?
And the gadgets on their own mean nothing. They don’t make life sensibly easier or more difficoult, just because they do exactly what You never wanted them to do before they have appeared.
Edited 2009-09-01 04:33 UTC
To me the whole social web thing is an abomination, a waste of time and resources, a passing thing, a temporary fashion craze. But that’s me, in a society that seems to think that if you’re not on half a dozen sites then you have some serious problems, or something to hide. On the other side, people complain when they e.g. loose a job opportunity because of drinking pictures on their open facebook (et al.) sites. I just don’t care for the whole shebang. There’s one (1) such site I’m on, which used to be about professional connections (I should’ve emphasized the “used to be” part).
The general idea stays true: too much of [whatever] is never good.
I agree with you, especially about it being replaced with something equally more “fashionable” in a few years. To me, all this myspace/facebook/whatever makes no sense. I’ve got better things to do than continuously update those things and check out others’ pages, thanks. Still, what others want to do is none of my business. I don’t get the social web thing, I don’t think it’ll stick around for all that long in the scheme of things, and quite frankly I don’t care if it does or not as it has nothing to do with me.
Regarding IBM’s patent, a facebook remote? Please tell me that even our patent system here in the US isn’t dumb enough to allow such a thing.
I’ve spouted off a whole lot of my own garbage, now, and it’s not really important.
Indeed you have. Now a reality check. It is non of your F-ing business how others spend their journey between the cradle and the grave. Despite thousands of years of philosophy, religion and other punditry, the purpose of life sofar still seems to be to merely exist and continue to exist. How that existence is shaped is a personal choice.
It doesn’t make one iota of difference if you spend your life on the couch or as a top athlete. 500 years from now nobody cares if you existed or not. Nobody really cares what you did or didn’t do. Nobody cares about you personally even if you you came up with the Grand Unified Theory of Everything. Your name would be a character string attached to the theory, but nobody would really know who you were and probably wouldn’t care if they knew you despised remotes or not. They’d probably grab the remote and switch the channel if Discovery went on too much about your pro-1950’s active, wholesome livestyle propaganda.
Now, the sun is shining and the dandelions are still in bloom, so if you don’t mind I will forget about your anti-couch-potato rant and get on with my life. A life which maybe filled with mindless entertainment or deep thoughts or heavy labor, but a life nonetheless that doesn’t care about your remote gadgetry hatred.
I know a girl who is not secluding herself from the world when connected to the net – she is including herself into the world. Without the net, she wouldn’t have a chance to communicate with the world. She’s 20, she’s using 7 remote controls, and she has a BMI of 15.5. She’s handicapped.
It seems to me that this entire rant is against technology. Technology is for me the biggest achievement humankind has ever accomplished. Technology makes the things people want possible.
Now you are claiming that people are using that technology the way they want and that that is bad. You would like to take the technology away if people don’t use it the way you would like them to use it.
In any moment the author says he is against technology.
Yes
To quote the author:
The author thinks you should be ashamed if you like to use technology for fun.
Sounds to me like you should either use technology the way the author wants or you are not worthy of using it.
It’s more about yourself, not the technology.
fun != waste your time
There are a lot of things you can do, have fun and don’t waste your time. As we are at OSNews, i’ll give you an example: Linus Torvalds still thinks programming Linux is fun. He changed the world of OSs having fun.
If at the end of your life you look back and say: “All my life I tweeted shits, and that was worthy.” and don’t blame yourself ’cause this, good for you.
It depends on your viewpoint. If something is fun to you it can be at the same time be a waste of time to somebody else. Games are a nice example. There are people that think that gaming is a waste of time.
I don’t think that was the point. If something is fun _for you_ then it is not a waste of time _for you_. It’s a personal perspective.
People who think that games are a waste of time probably do not find them fun either.
As is the case with most hobbies and recreational activities. Only someone who knits would find knitting _not_ a waste of time.
Do what makes you happy and you are _not_ wasting time, no matter what other people think.
I’m really starting to get confused… wasn’t PAGE 1/PAGE 2 introduced to distinguish between OS centric news and articles, and other somewhat related articles???
What is going on??? There seems to be no clear distinction anymore, it seems like items are just dumped randomly these days!
Please don’t go down this road, I always liked this clear focus of osnews.com. Sure there are really slow times, but that’s just the way it is. Right now, it looks like osnews is desperately trying to generate page hits to increase revenue from ad partners. And if this continues, there won’t be a reason to come here anymore, osnews.com will loose what made me come here in the first place.
No. It’s to segregate “things that the staff feels like pontificating about” from “things they don’t”. Remember that OSNews is not really a news site, but a collective personal blog in disguise.
Sure we abuse technology and technology makes us lazy but why blame technology for it? Blame that person utilizing the technology.
Yes – We need to go to the GYM
Yes – We use remote controls to change TV channels or turn up the volume thus we move less and we put on weight but as long as we exercise regularly, we’ll be fine….
Take the stairs rather than the escalators….and so on….
Do not blame technology, blame the person who has control over it….
Edited 2009-09-01 11:07 UTC
With so much technology around it’s easy to fall into the temptation of abusing it and neglecting your body.
Well, maybe then those of a weak mind get what they deserve?
No, we don’t. Humans have been reduced to hamsters on treadmills. Get outside and exercise. The ‘gym’ is a crutch for those with poor lifestyle choices.
Active people need NO gym. What we need is exercise.
…which you can get in the gym. What the hell is your point?
We need to compensate for all those starving african kids without technology!
On a more serious note, it’s called progress or change. People always resisted it. Luckily today we don’t burn people anymore who claims the earth is round (it’s flat and hollow btw). But you are free to go back into the ocean and live as an amoeba. We can all agree that a live as an amoeba is a lot less work, simpler and if amoeba do the sex thing than it’s just as much fun.
Although not OS related, it’s a nice article. And the author are not against technology as some guys here seems to think.
It pretty much reflects our society. You have to consume content, even if this “content” is simply crap. Consume, consume, consume. And this is a new era! (!) Today everybody produces content, just because there are a lot of people who will consume this content, no matter if it’s just shit.
I didn’t think about these things before Twitter. This article just reflects almost all I think about it. And it seems to answer the question author points: “Must we really always be connected to the net?”.
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/08/17/why-i-dont-use-twitter/
And yes, I’m not fat. Nice article indeed.
You don’t have to consume the crappy content and you don’t have to consume consume consume. You don’t have to watch tv, radio or any other medium. We have never had this much content to choose from. Most people choose the content and products that you(and I) call crappy. But it is their choice and you can choose to watch something else.
To the question: “Must we really always be connected to the net?”
Why not? You don’t ask if you should use another technology all day. Why make the exception with internet?
Of course I do. I ask myself everyday why we need all these things around. As l3v1 said, “too much of (whatever) is never good”.
Some people seems to think they need a car to go to a supermarket just meters away. This is more common than you think. And, for these people, this is a necessity, this is essential. Do you think you need the technology “car” for this? Maybe if you’re too lazy or too fat.
In a world where in a lot of places you live just to consume, we all have to think if we need all these things they put up in market everyday.
THANK YOU!
I could buy you a pin that says “Has a Head on His Shoulders.”
I am the author in question (I always have to explain this– my comment name is different than my posting name). Consider this more a clarifying amendment to the article rather than a comment, I suppose:
I’ve read some of the comments, and people seem to think I’m avidly against technology. Not true. I embrace it. You might consider me an addict to some of it. Why else would I be at OSNews? I utilize Facebook myself (“Hypocrite!” a handful of you are now dying to comment. Hold your horses before trying to pick out any little loophole I missed, please). This article is not to say that all technology is bad. In fact, most of it I think is progress and can help people in general.
I specifically mentioned that I believe that it’s usually not technology that causes the issues– it’s the way people decide to use the technology that is provided. I also specifically pointed out that I don’t think all technology is bad. But perhaps I ought to clarify seeing as how most of my article would make one think that I hate technology: technology is amazing. It helps lives, whether we’re “just like everyone else” or whether we are literally incapable of some things (such as the handicapped girl mentioned in a previous comment). It saves lives, it helps lives, and it helps communities and businesses and all other sorts of organizations. It’s truly amazing. However, the main point of this article was not to praise technology’s many pluses but to say that there can be too much of anything, even if it’s a good thing, and technology seems a chief problem of having too much in the 21st century. There can be too much time spent with technology, there can be too much money spent on it, there can be too much entertainment, and yes, there can be too much work. That’s what I’m trying to say.
I’m not against entertainment, I’m not against using technology for fun (I used to play video games a lot when I was younger, and I still use technology to have “fun” quite a bit even still). I use Facebook often to communicate with my friends and colleagues and also to advertise for a website I’m launching. I use email a great deal of the day. I’m connected to the net probably 50-80% of the time I’m not asleep depending on the day. There are times when I find myself wasting my time and energy on pointless things to do with technology, too. It’s a problem with most people today, and it affects me, too. Please stop taking what I say to extremes. But asking that in a comment thread at a website where a bunch of nerds such as myself conglomerate is like asking water to not go through the holes in a strainer. Alas.
Well, there you have it. Clarification that wouldn’t be needed if the reader wouldn’t take my opinion on one matter and blow it up in his or her mind to have it apply to everything. Again, this is only a view on how technology can be abused, not how great it is (and it’s really great– I love it; I just hate how it can ruin and degrade lives, also). Now I will take the advice of a vehement commenter before me and stop prophesying. Enjoy picking the loopholes that you do out of this as well.
Meh, says who. Unhealthy products don’t appear out of thin air; to consume them, people have to actively go out and buy them.
People can chose to buy or not buy something, chose to be active or inactive. There aren’t actually any secrets about how to lose weight or live a healthy life, and people can decide to do these things. Nannying people who decide not to isn’t my job.
“more to publish their lives on yet another teen-infested network?”
AOL Company on CBC Canada I believe…reveals that its women in their early thirties and senior citizens that are making up most of the new accounts and traffic.