Saturday, November 24, 2007

some good writing

I'm always a fan of fine writing.

Monitor Zombies.


My cell phone actually has a GPS remote locator. I guess, in theory, if you were to lose your phone, you could activate the GPS remote locator with your computer and find out where your phone is. Again, this is an absolutely wonderful idea. In theory.

Her: Where were you last night?
Me: Last night? Oh, uh, I was at the library doing some research of course.
Her: Uh-huh. Your cell phone GPS locator however puts you at the strip club downtown.
Me: What? WTF?! Well, I guess I lost my phone or something, because I wasn’t there…
Her: Your cell phone is right there in your pocket.
Me: Oh yeah, some guy returned it to me like 5 minutes ago.
Her: ……….
Me: Ok, fine, I was at the strip club. But I got dragged by the guys, and I didn’t enjoy it at all!
Her: Oh really? Your phone’s vital stats monitor says you had 14 different erections.
Me: ….What the fuck kind of phone is this?! Goddamnit I hate technology.

I’m starting to find that with each passing day, I grow closer to running away from it all and adopting an Amish lifestyle. Hey, if there are any Amish people reading this, why don’t you drop me an email or add me on Facebook so we can chat about this?

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

we, Amish people, do not liking commenting

Anonymous said...

We also dislike email. And Facebook. And yuppies.

Anonymous said...

Stop the world, I want to get off.

Anonymous said...

You can turn that feature off you know.

It is cool though..
Parents can watch kids movements through the teenage years.

Employers who supply phones can track you down at the bar at see if you drove the company car.

My wife can see that I stopped by my girlfriends house for 2 hours.

Wait a minute..
NOW we HAVE gone too far.

Dan Egnor said...

"Whenever you see an Amish woman sitting in the field like that," my guide said, "she's probably talking on a cell phone."

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/7.01/amish.html

But this article is from 8 years ago. I've been unable to find any kind of follow-up, even though I'm curious: how, indeed, have the Amish reacted to trends in technology over the last few years? The doctrine of separation would, I think, exclude most of what we consider the Internet; but "e-mail shanties" could be much more useful than "phone shanties".

I wish people who wrote rants got the details right. It's annoying when people write about the privacy implications of GPS in phones or the Amish without knowing much about either.

But the linked article is really about relationships, I think, not technology. Even before cell phones and MySpace, plenty of men and women managed to be controlling, jealous, and insecure, but I suppose instant access is a facilitator.

Matthew said...

I find that story funny, but also chilling!

Not to take the posting on a tangent or anything, but there's a good book called Spying With Maps (reviewed here), a good read for anyone who finds geographical data mining interesting.

Anonymous said...

"14 different erections"? just how many possible erections are there?

O Relly said...

LOL.

Now, I love that kind of technology.
Very interesting to imagine a future like this.

Imagine, if you had a device which would tell if your woman just faked that orgasm.

Thinking about it, that's actually scary...brrr.