TELEPHONE ZOMBIES

Guy at work has been playing it. At work. We drive service vehicles around town and he's often preoccupied with it. He's slightly older than I, and in playing it is sending messages as to the newer/younger team members as to the urgency of the job (not much, ever). It's obnoxious

Bet you can't add a tag to this topic.

That's not the same, there's all sorts of things people shouldn't do at work, and that's one of them. What people do in their free time is up to them.

Wow!

Did you expect such negative reactions?

I don't much care what they're doing with their cell phones but if they remove their focus on the wide world and all it holds and replace it with words and images on a tiny screen, they are missing out on life.

Last week I was at a Japanese steak house with family and brother-in-law's family. My nephews and niece are 10, 13 and 15 and if my wife's brother had let them, they may have spent the evening staring at phone screens, but, fortunately for them, he's too good a father to allow such a thing.

Meanwhile a family of five were sitting at the table to our right. Everyone of them (Mom and Dad too) were focused on their phones while their hibachi chef was knocking himself out with his cooking show. Admittedly, the guy was hardly a major talent but if you're not going to watch the show, why go to one of these places? It was awkward as hell and eventually the chef just gave up and finished the meal without the usual onion volcano and corny jokes about Japanese butter and such.

This addiction to checking phones for texts and the latest meme or video can't be good for interpersonal relationships, and if a family is so addicted to their phones that they can't put them down when at a family outing, what must life be like within the walls of their home?

Not to mention the fools who can't put the damn things down when they are driving. If I see someone on the road who is repeatedly swerving out of their lane, I can guarantee that when I speed up and pass them to get out of the danger zone they've created, I will find them staring at a phone.

The pokeball fad is no more insipid than the ones that have, in the past, swept the nations: pet rocks, hula hoops, beanie babies, pokeman (the first time around), streaking, mood rings etc, nor is it the first one to involve physical activity. In and off itself, it's hardly a sign of society's decay, nor an alarming trend. It's just another in a long line of fads. Eventually it will fade and a new on will take it's place.

What is an alarming trend though is the extent to which people are replacing real time interaction with physical human beings with immersion in an alternate technological reality.

The cell phone is a great innovation which has changed our lives in a number of ways. Like anything else, some ways are positive and some are not.

My wife and I go walking in the park, and we see people staring at their iPhone screens and walking around. It's amazing how much concentration they're putting into playing games on their iPhone.

This thread is just

just what? it looks like 50/50 cotton rayon. Thats cheap cloth

I must have missed the comments from Luddites.

I don't see anyone bemoaning cell phone technology or sounding the warning that it spells the ruination of society.

There has been some critical comments (including of course my own) about certain behaviors of people utilizing the technology. I certainly don't want to see the elimination of any technological innovation (quite the opposite - I'm eagerly awaiting the Singularity), but I would like to see people use them more appropriately.

Some people , like the izzyman, are just a bit humor challenged.

When we were out and about with the Pokemon players last Sunday, I wanted to take out my fone and , while staring at the screen , yell,
"WOW she is stark naked" Is that Taylor Swift?


(kids like Taylor Swift) .

My wife called me a juvenile. However, people, playing Pokemon, re willing to share their virtual findings since the area was a park set in a peninsula that jutted out in the Chesapeake. So when you spin the screen around thwre are all kinds of nautical pokemons.

Coupla kids were just ambling along, face in screens, and they shuffled out onto a street where some dude in a beach jeep went all Charles Bronson and started beeping at the players.

My cell phone is loaded with all kinds of geo apps.I dont have to carry a theodolite or a transit in the foield anymore (I can generate a good enough map of my area of interest and telephone it to mysurveyors and they can come right out based on my directions and the GPS map and photos. I dont know hat Id do without the damn thing >I can carry more food and water, they still hvent come up with n app for a BLT

I ask you again, have you done standup? Have you had an audience of 200+ strangers rolling with laughter like I have? When you've done that you can accuse me of being "humour challenged" whatever that means.

Suck it up, ya dweebs. I alone know how to be funny. From now on, check with me before you log in your so-called humor. I will get back with ya. We'll do coffee.

if you could make your request sound funny ,I may have bekieved you.
eg
"Have you done standup? WHAT's IT LIKE?

"HAVE you had an audience of 200 strangers rolling with laughter like I have?-- "
somehow, from your pots, I really doubt it. Ive yet to see one here you dont get all defensive and strike out like youre doin ith me. (Unless of course your entire act was based on bein a passive aggressive douche bag)

Im a student of the principle item in good humor.

I love the ice cream.

Those were some great passages in that book. It was so earnest the way he went on about Collins, Whitney Houston, Huey Lewis and the News.

Drinking a Puligny Montrachet should be avoided for the 2004 2005 varietal years.
I truly reccomend a 2010 2011 vintage.

Care to listen to my collection of the FUGs?

Well said!

What you believe is not important. I know the truth.

You're a nice enough guy but you've got lousy taste, music, food, comedy, (you didn't like Father Ted, I didn't think that even was possible.) This wouldn't be a problem in itself, if you weren't so evangelical about your poor taste.

There was a programme about the 80s on the telly last night, which included outrage about the impact Space Invaders was having on young people. Some things never change.

I can't say I have much of a problem with Pokemon Go. A a matter of fact, it's going to be a rather interesting 'experiment' in so far that it will allow us to see the effect of a large, massive group of gamers interacting with the real world through a 'virtual' type of interface. People have already mentioned that it might very well be good for socially awkward people, as some hardcore gamers can be.

I can't say they are all 'zombies' either. The thing that amuses me most about this, is how Westboro church is being involved into this. I have no patience for this group of deluded people, and I was very amused when the LGBT community claimed the virtual Pokemon gym Westboro church is (apparently, all churches are a gym) blatantly took over the gym with some sort of pokemon called LoveisLove. I am curious to see how this type of interaction will be used in creative ways like that.

Frankly, in a time where paranoia seems to be the word of the decade, the sheer joy of these goofy 'kids' running around catching their virtual beasties and being all happy about it is - for me - a bit of a ray of hope.

Cheers!