Culture and Technology - The Cell Phone

T

TahoeHorn

1,000+ Posts
How has/will the cell phone change culture?

Have you noticed how certain technologies transform our culture? One of the best examples is the automobile. It changed where we live, who our friends are, our relationship with our family, our buying habits, our dating habits and more. I think technology change drives cultural change, and the cell phone is doing that now.

My nieces are all early twentyish and very cell phone. Very. One was in New york and looking for a place to eat and called up friends on the Pacific coast trying to fingd one near a computer to look up a pizza place near her in New York. I don't think that way. I see people in the grocery store reading labels and asking somebody, presumably a spouse, which item to get. My nieces sail off on a trip unprepared or to rendevous with friends sans plan. No problem. Just cell phone the problem away. The same with a caravan to the ball game. No plan, just make decisions real time with the phone. The thing I notice is that critical planning skills aren't getting developed. I could rail about that for pages but I will spare you. Reading a map is another example of a skill not developing because of the cell phone although that's not a base skill like planning. If the cell phone preempts the need, so what?

What impact do you see?
 
In a generation, the greatness of Seinfeld will be underestimated especially the chinese restaurant episode.
 
I have found that cell phones have made me forget almost all contact information, such as pone numbers and addresses. Since I have it all stored in the phone, I generally just push one button and dial. I could not tell you my mother's or father's phone number now if you had a gun to my head. In actuality, I probably only know the phone numbers of about 5 of my closest friends and family members.

Birthdays is another. If I don't get a notification from my outlook calendar, I won't know to acknowledge a birthday.

You could also throw in grammar and spelling. I am firmly convinced that some kids turn in homework now days with lolz, "2"'s in place of "to" and "too".
 
Interesting topic - how about business and social etiuette now.

It's absolutely permissable to be sitting with people in a business or social setting and be reading and writing on your balckberry.

I was out Friday with my fiancee, two fo her hot friends and 4 dudes drinking and it seemed half the time the people were emailin or texting other people than the ones they were socializing with.
 
Honestly? I see an increase in rudeness from the use of cell phones.

People think nothing of stopping in aisles at a grocery store and carrying on a conversation, while everyone else has to maneuver around them.

People in restaraunts jabbering away, usually almost always yelling into the damn things. It's one thing if it's a loud and rowdy place, but they also do it in otherwise quiet places. And then get all bent when they're asked to tone it down or take it outside.

People on them in libraries, and at movies and concerts.

Cell phones going off at church, even after the announcement before Mass or services to please turn 'em off or put them on silent. Even the occasional idiot that ANSWERS their phone during the service. BTW, this almost always seems to be a woman. Of course all this happens after she has to frantically dig through her purse looking for the phone once it starts ringing.

30 second crappy and loud as **** cuts of songs for the ringtone. Especially at work

People that can't trying to drive and talk at the same time (some people can), they start drifting around lanes, slowing down, sitting through green traffic signals or stop signs. Or running stop signs.
 
Do the following experiment: on your commute home from work, engage in a 10-minute cell phone conversation. Then, right after you hang up, try to visualize what happened on the road for the past 10 minutes: what lane changes you made, what cars you were behind, who was behind you, how fast traffic was moving, things you noticed on the road, etc. I think it is now well established that when driving and talking on the phone, people put their road awareness in "auto-pilot". I have done this experiment, and it's frightening to realize that you end up with no recollection of what happened.
 
How about the need to always be talking to someone? No matter how much or how little down time people have, they seem to hop right on the cell phone and start jabbering away.

How about shutting the **** up and enjoying the silence for a few minutes or actually start thinking of something?
 
I just know that it makes me feel REALLY old when I tell folks one of my favorite "UT is a mindless bureaucracy" stories -- it involves a buddy who could not make an appointment with an academic adviser in person -- he HAD to do it by telephone (it was UT policy).

So, he had to walk out of the West Mall Office Building across the mall to the UGL, where he got on one of the bank of payphones and called the very office that he just walked out of. This happened in 1991. When I tell that story to younger folks, they look at me funny, and I have to explain "you gotta understand, this was before cellphones." Yeah, a few people had them, but they were a fancy-pants luxury item in 1991.

Hell, when I started practicing law, one of the "rules of decorum" that the old hands let me in on was "if you have a cellphone, don't let any of the jurors see you using it on break -- they'll think you're an arrogant rich bastard." Within a few years, however, every juror started showing up with a cellphone. That rule went by the wayside, along with the bag of quarters I used to keep in my briefcase to use the courthouse payphone.

I'm f'n old.
 
I agree on the silence thing. It's as if most people will go crazy without some sort of noise. case in point: the car radio/CD player/MP3/etc. Most people have to have the thing on. I've tried that experiement on some people, asking them to drive aroudn with it off and see if the notice the difference.

In reply to:
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Freshman year of high school I went to the kemah boardwalk with a couple of friends. It was rare for anyone that age at that time to have their own cell phone so my dad wanted me to borrow his black green screen motorola flip phone for that night to call him when we were done. So when we were done for that night I busted out the phone and all of my friends were amazed and in awe that I had a cell phone which I said it was my own cause I thought I was the ****.

Now I see that nearly every middle schooler has one now....
 
I teach a developmental study skills class, and it's automatic failure on any assignment that includes "aol shorthand".

Cell phones are ruining our culture. But I couldn't live without mine.
 
I will say this, cell phones now top the list of adolescent status symbols. Cell phones have overtaken shoes, purses, and clothes, and even possibly cars. You gotta have the latest and greatest for the status even moreso that the actual features.
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You see leisure reading being cut down. Back in the early 90's we'd read books in-between classes or on the bus. Now everyone texts or plays games. Also back in the day, after a date you MIGHT call a buddy about it. Now you go back home and chat to all your friends about it.
 
The driving thing just drives me up a wall.

What happens is the person gets tunnel vision, they only pay attention to what it right in front of them. I have noticed that the person taligaiting me(I can't see their tires in my rearview) are talking on the cellphone 9/10 times. The person going under the speed limit on the freeway, cell phone.

I admit, there have been times that I have done it, but I really try not to do it. My problem is work email, not necessarily talking but trying to respond. I avoid it or wait for the next red light.
 
Cell Phones are but a small extension of a larger tech revolution: the digital revolution. Information access has become much more expansive, mobile, and personal. It is easier to stay in your own little world/space/comfort zone/realm of taste and preference, etc., and the phone now helps you take that insulated experience into broader realms of the outside world.

Music, movies, text, phone calls, messages, directions through time and space, etc., are all at the fingertips when in your home, your car, your seat at a restaurant. We have no well developed set of social graces ready to fend against this onslaught of personal independence and the violence it does to regular human interaction.

I most often wonder what the home entertainment wing of this revolution is going to do: young people are constantly bombarded with games that ask them to imagine seeing themselves as controlling other bodies as extensions of their own desires (video games) while also having access to easy recording devices (video and audio) which most use for the basest levels of exploration (videos of accidents, fights, sex, and other acts of abject stupidity). Most of us have grown up understanding that staring at oneself is to be guarded against. Not anymore, and the levels of shame that might have kept almost everyone on the planet from displaying themselves defecating, copulating, getting knocked out in an alley, etc., are fast being erased.
 
The weirdest thing regarding this "Culture Change" for me...

I loved getting records. I'd spend hours looking at the clowns on the cover of the Butthole Surfers "Locust Abortion Clinic" and listen to it, imagining, well... everything. But I'd want to know more about the band. I wanted to see what they looked like, their history, other albums, etc.

Now there is Google, Wikipedia, and Amazon, to name a few. There are also fan pages, the band's actual website, and myspace pages full of information. I have everything I've always wanted, right?

No.

I still can't quite remember what it was like in 10th grade seeing them at the Arcadia Theater on Greenville Avenue in 1988.

It all means that we have so much more access, but to me personally I stll think it isn't enough. We need more.

We have to see the drummer for Guns and Roses try and throw out his heroin on a celebrity rehab TV show, and there are bonus clips online through VH1.com. It is all there, even the stuff that makes us feel awful, or like we'll never get those 45 minutes back. It's everywhere, phones, playstations, yahooIM, and even the Nike swoosh on our favorite teams' jersey.


I sure did love that album though. THose are hours I wouldn't trade for the world, or even a night partying with the band. Well maybe not, but you might get what I mean.
 
something I do a lot when i am watching older movies (late 70's to the early 90's), I realize that most of those movies wouldnt be able to be made today (or the writers would have to make a MAJOR detour to tell the audience why no one has a cell phone.

Major example: Die Hard. in '88 cell phones were so rare only the limo had one. All the hard lines were cut, and suddenly no communication available. And forget thinking about the internet.

Theres a lot of movies like that, that I watch, and even think, wow, all they have to do is make a phone call to say where they are, and then i realize, oh yeah its 1983, no cell phones.

Similar situation when I was watching the TV Jericho, I kept thinking to myself, why not just call and tell everyone to look out, bad guys coming, then I had to remind myself that the EMP had wiped out all the electronics, and no phones anymore.
 
Same thing on the movies with books. Sometimes I'll find an author that I like and go back and read earlier books and a lot of the ones from the mid 90's to earlier you think- well, that entire situation could have been solved with a cellphone.

Definately makes some premises more difficult. Now instead we get movies about hackers and other things like that that use the new medium to advance the story line.
 
"it seemed half the time the people were emailin or texting other people than the ones they were socializing with."

No, they're probably texting each other about you.
 
I have a pager when I'm on call and a go-phone in my car for emergencies, otherwise I've never used a cell phone. I find them more annoying than useful- though I realize I'm in the frank minority on that one.

If I can simply raise my kids so that they'll sit down for a few hours and read a novel with any frequency I'll be happy. It's the one sine qua non for intelligence (defined selfishly as someone I enjoy talking to of course) that I've found.
 
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