A device not many of us could live without these days, the mobile phone is (remarkably) forty years old today!
From a "brick" that weighed more than two bags of sugar to today's interweb-savvy Tweet-monsters (the ruin of pub quizzes forever), it is impossible to think of an era before they were invented.
Back in 1973, we had the Common Market, the IRA, space-hoppers, Watergate, peace in Vietnam, The Ascent of Man, a forthcoming Royal Wedding (Anne), and Donny Osmond vs David Cassidy to concern ourselves about, after all...
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An appropriate song, methinks...
I must admit I quite like the idea of a world without mobile phones. Like with most things, people generally don't seem to know how to use them in moderation. Now you are expected to pick up the phone after one ring, no matter what time, no matter what you are doing and no matter where you are. You should answer any SMS in seconds and you are of course expected to give status updates on all your bloody social sites every hour, even in your sleep!
ReplyDeleteOh, and if I see one more driver swinging all over the road because his attention is on the bloody phone call and not the road, I just might throw myself in front of the car to teach him a lesson ;)
That is all!
Indeed, the whole of society is affected - so many prime-time television programmes are all "ten-second-attention-span" formats, with incessant "audience interaction"/"your vote counts" type shit, it's any wonder anyone has any capacity for learning left. This "yoof-style" nonsense pervades politics, schools and, of course, the media (which can't go five seconds without a reference to Twitter or F**book "trends" or quotes)...
DeleteWe're in a "Brave New World", sweetie, like it or not, unfortunately. Jx
Yeah - I stopped watching TV years ago, mostly for those exact reasons! Trying to watch prime-time shows just makes me aggravated, annoyed and stressed (just watching a short news clip from ET makes me want to break the screen). And I do not give a f**k about some bloody Facebook/Twitter/Instagram/whatever trends and fail to how these belong in the evening news!
ReplyDeleteIt may be a brave new world - I just try to make sure to have some control over just how affected I am by it.
Am off to watch a couple episodes of some good shows (from DVDs of course) ;)
We certainly don't watch mainstream telly - we tend to wade through a vast morass of nonsense to cherry-pick the bits we do want to record and watch at our leisure. As a consequence (thankfully) we can extricate ourselves from the most banal conversations as well. "No, I did not watch Strictly/Corrie/X-Factor/The Voice last night"... Jx
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