mrry (Happy New Year)
 
Blog Incommunicado 23/Nov/2005

A hypothetical situation for you to chew over.

Suppose, in a fit of carelessness, you leave your mobile phone at home when you go out of the house. Which of these feelings is worse?

  1. The prolonged sense of unease that attends because you can't be sure that the world isn't falling apart because you aren't able to take a call from the King of Town/President of Earth/Mechapope, or
  2. The disappointment when you get home to find nary a text message, voicemail or missed call. In six hours.

As ever, your opinions, anecdotes and deprecating witticisms are invited in the comments.

Cheers,

Derek.

PS. At least my illegal butcher's shop didn't get closed down. Phew.

 
CommentsComments 

Steve said:
Personally, I can live without the web, email, etc for days on end -- and generally do enjoy getting away from the influx of information for a while. My phone, on the other hand, is different. It's designed to be real-time, whereas both the web and email store information until you decide it's convenient for you to go retreive that information.

In times of stress, however, the phone is one of the first things to be turned off...

Neil said:
Whoah there! That was me on the last comment... apparently I either spacked up and entered my name as Gary (freudian?) or, well no, that's exactly what I did.

Gary said:
It probably wouldn't no.. but I'd get fired from work if I did it during the week and if I did it at the weekend then I'd end up having no fun ;)

I remember a DAS lecture when Dickman (not a superhero if anyone from outwith DCS is reading this) was talking about the plague of mobile phones and how it's ruined the way that 'young people' plan their lives. He basically said that because we know that when we're meeting up with people we don't have to organise to meet them at specific places at specific times as we can phone them and he believes that this is affecting our skills at planning. Judging by the panic that people go into when they lose their phone, that's probably right.

Staying away from the web and email's an interesting one. I don't think I could do it as a I do have a severe information addiction. I need to know at all time what's going on concerning things that interest me. Hence the frankly ridiculous number of times I refresh BBC news, /., thereg and so on during the working day. I could probably start an information addiction clinic and make millions.


PS Derek, you need a larger comment box.

Gary Fleming said:
That kind of behaviour frightens me, that people need to stay in contact so badly.

An experiment: for 2 days, switch off your mobile, don't go near the web or email, don't answer the phone. Hypotheses: the world won't end in the interim.

Colleen said:
You forgot to mention the feeling that someone may find your phone, where ever you left it and have a look through it.

I symapthise with Neil.. I borrowed a friends phone to text everyone that might text me to tell them to use another number. Only one text back! :(

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