CELL PHONE IMPLANT

My wife and I have a membership at the university gym in town.  We walk the track in the winter time.   We don’t interact with the kids just transmogrifying into adulthood.    We view them as curious creatures with a connection to our DNA, in the same manner we view chimpanzees; as different enough to be considered another species. 

  

We try to arrive at the gym around noon when the students have gone to feed; but the last time we were there was during a peak usage.   It was amazing.  All the student walking the track had their cell phones in their hand or plugged into their ears, the students running the outside of the track were wired into their cell phones, all young people on the exercise bikes had their cell phone balanced atop their display panels or plugged into their ears, one young girl was stretching on a mat while reading her text messages. 

  

Only one; a tiny young girl, running at a demented pace on the Nordic Track, didn’t seem to have a bionic connection to a cell phone.

If a cell phone implant was available, I wonder how many of this new generation would spend the night in the parking lot, waiting for the hospital to open, to be first in line for the implant?

    

OK, I can understand this.  Children, a couple of generations after mine, were raised in front of a television: Mr. Rogers and Sesame Street.   This new generation was introduced to some type of computer before they were even potty trained.

The thing I find curious is the attachment to cell phones for people born before 1970.   These people spent at least thirty years of their life – over half of their life – never knowing what a cell phone was.   They got up in the morning and went to work or school, came home, had supper, watched television and went to bed.  They probably went for days without using a telephone.  If they were traveling, or involved in an activity, and found they needed to communicate by phone, they either waited until they got home or used a public pay telephone. 

 

People fifty and older never suffered by not having immediate and continuous connection to a telephone or the internet.    Yet, today, they can’t sit in a restaurant without checking their cell phone.   Sometimes in restaurants when a person’s cell phone goes off, I feel like standing up and shouting: Turn off your damn phone.  You’re not that important.

  

 My wife and I attend a playhouse in the summer time.  We always go to the Wednesday matinees, which are mainly attended by older people.  At the beginning of each play the stage manager announces to people to turn off their cell phones.     I have never attended a play that at least one cell phone didn’t go off during the performance.

I have got to admit that I have a cell phone, and when we lost electricity during the wind storm last week and our land line was down, I turned it on and called the light company. 

I plug our cell phone in once a month to keep it charged.   In case of an apocalyptic disaster caused by global warming and wiping out civilization, I want to be able to call my friend and tell him: I told you so.

The Ol’Buzzard

WIRE YOUR CELL PHONE TO YOUR BRAIN? WHY NOT?

The idea of cell phones has been around since the 1940’s when Dick Tracy used his wrist phone to apprehend criminals.

There was Maxwell Smart and his shoe phone,

 and Star Wars and the flip-phone.

Practical cell phones came around after 2000, and for the last twenty years phones have become more innovative and more popular; and now a cell phone is probably the most important object that everyone owns. 

   

Elementary school kids carry cell phones; and teenagers and young adults would be dysfunctional without their phones.

Being and old man from the days of telephones that were connected by telephone operators, I often joke that if people could they would have their phones embedded in their brains.

Now that is not so far fetched.

 

A company formed by Elon Musk is developing a devise that connects your brain to a smartphone.

  Dozens of wire implants will be connected to a transmitter that tucks behind the ear like a hearing aid and transmits signals to your computer or smart phone. 

This is not a new idea, as scientist have been testing brain implants on paralyzed patients, allowing them to move computer cursors and robotic arms.

But now, Musk predicts he will have a telepathy device for healthy people within a decade. 

Do you really think that young people will not line up for 24/7 cell phone implants? 

   I have no doubt that within fifty years everyone will be a walking cell phone.

the Ol’Buzzard

TURN OFF YOUR PHONE

I was raised in the fifties and lived through the sixties and seventies – and there were no cell phones.   If you were at work and needed to call home, you went to a phone and made your call.   If you were traveling you waited until you got to your destination to make your call.   No one felt the need to have a telephone with them at all times; and people were able to do things without obsessing that they might miss a call, or a text from a friend shopping at a grocery store and posting about the price of peas.

If you are a professional on call I can understand you need; but the average person does not need to be tied to a telephone.  You are not that important.  And the idiot walking around Walmart with the cyborg phone blinking in his ear…; and anyone who has their cell phone ring during a movie or a play should have the phone shoved up their ass. 

Ok, I am antiquated, archaic, unfashionable, out-of-date, outmoded, , behind the times; but this obsession with a cell phone is really ridiculous. 

Old man yelling at clouds

the Ol’Buzzard 

BE QUIET AND THINK

I just commented on a blog, that I feel out of touch with the world around me.   

I lived most of my life without a cell phone.   If I needed to make a telephone call I waited until I got home or reached my destination – and I didn’t miss anything by not having a phone appendage on my body.  

It is the same with television.   I was a teenager when we had our first television (black and white 16 inch.)  If there was something I wanted to see I could turn it on at night after supper – and I wasn’t deprived of news or entertainment.  

Today I took my youngest cat to the vet.   There was a TV in the waiting room blaring Good Morning America.   When I go to the VA clinic they have a TV on – usually on Fox.   At the VA hospital waiting room there is a TV – you can’t get away from it.   Our favorite Italian restaurant – upstairs in the lunch room there are three TVs, often on different channels.  The diners we frequent all have televisions – usually on some stupid channel.    Even at McDonald's there is a TV going in the eating area.   

Almost any waiting room you have to sit in will have a TV playing.   What the hell is this, that we must be entertained all the time?

We are not afraid of sickness or disease or destruction - we are afraid of boredom.   We must have a TV; or cell phones that display tweets, face book, internet, instant messaging, texting…   We cannot sit quietly anywhere without something to entertain us.   We must have ambient noise.  

There is no such thing as quiet, whether at work, while we eat, while we exercise, while we meditate, while we play, while we have sex and often while we sleep.  

It is a strange new world and I haven’t adapted.   

Sometimes I just like to sit in the quiet.

the Ol’Buzzard