Phony Tales

In the age of the smartphone there are still some non-tech savvy stragglers, myself included, that could use some assistance. This blog will be about the moments when I do encounter this technology and what would have happened if I did not receive help from God's gift to earth (smartphone technology!!).

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Blog Roll

http://funputerz.blogspot.com/: blog by Lex about everyday computer problems and solutions to fix them

·         www.iphonedownloadblog.com : comments and advises about iphone apps

·         http://androidcommunity.com/ : comments on various smartphone technology

·         http://ariherzog.com/ : asks basic questions about technology, such as, “would you get rid of your smartphone?”

·         www.andreaskoestler.com : commented on a week of her life when she could not use her smartphone

·         www.jonathanfields.com : talks about new expectations of always being connected and available

·         www.twittown.com : a blogging community based around people’s electronic lives

·         www.blog.greenough.com : a business storytelling blog from the perspective of a self-proclaimed smartphone addict 

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Wirelessly Wireless

I will start off this blog post with an acknowledgement to the film maker Robert Rodriguez and his blood filled, adventure tale, “Machete”.  Tired out from the long weekend my roommates and I decided to put on a movie downstairs in our living room.  The only problem with this is movie was downloading upstairs in my roommate’s room.  We are all in the 21/22 year old range and in good enough shape to take the walk up the stairs, but there are some moments when the minute and a half walk seems very unappealing.  This was one of those times.  If we could just find a way to control his computer screen from the couch, finish the download, upload the download on to his computer’s mainframe and wirelessly stream it to the hard drive in the X Box that is connected to the television.  This all sounded easy enough.  I made myself a grilled cheese and waited the 21st century work its magic.

The app search was officially on.  He first found a ten dollar app that would let him control his computer from his iphone.  After a little more research he found a free app with the same capabilities, but that limits him to 5 minute periods when controlling his laptop.  It was extraordinary to see so much effort be put into task in order to maintain a certain level of laziness.  He got his app and he performed all the before mentioned tasks.  We were watching Mexican street wars, with heads flying all over the  place in no time. 

Even though the app search took 15 minutes, it kept our legs fresh for movie watching and gave me a chance to make a grilled cheese sandwich for myself.

 If we did not have an iphone…

As we waited for the movie to download, my roommates and I had to decide who was going to be the unlucky one that had to walk up the stairs and import the file to the computer.  In the name of chopping people’s heads off with machetes we chopped straws and each chose one.  I ended up picking the shortest straw so I went upstairs and did the deed.   It actually was not bad at all and I felt silly for considering it a difficult task.  Not to mention, I got some cardio out of it as well.

Things to think about…

Will the quest for technology that increases convenience in our lives actually take up more time than doing the activities we are trying to avoid?

Will our reliance on technology change our outlook at what is a hassle and what is necessary in our everyday lives?        

Technology has altered our expectations of what is an acceptable use of our time.  The issue here was not the actual walk.  The motivation of the walk was not present because we knew there could be an easier way.  This particular instance shows how our idea of an acceptable use of our time is getting out of hand.  We need to stop focusing on creating technologies just to create new technologies so we can focus our efforts on the most useful applications of our new technology.  We also need to learn how to live without some of our new found luxuries because our reliance on technology could backfire on us in the future.

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Are We There Yet?

After movies such as Road Trip and Motorcycle Diaries the idea of a road trip initiates thoughts of a vacation filled with crazy, spontaneous moments.  That is exactly what passed through my mind when I was getting ready to drive up to Davis on a bus with my fraternity brothers from UC San Diego and San Diego State.  It started out conforming to my expectations of spontaneity as our scheduled departure time of 11:15 turned into 12:30 due to occurrences of over sleeping and the undervaluing of how other people feel when they wait someplace over an hour for a person to show up.

                We did not have many stops planned out during our 10 hour bus journey, but food and restroom stops were on the back of everyone’s mind the whole trip.  The only problem was coordinating these thoughts.  We were driving for 10 hours up the 5 freeway and matching the hunger time-frames of 45 drunk college students (details omitted) with the time-frame of when we will pass each food stop,  an almost impossible task.  This was a lot easier for Sean William Scott and his buddies because there were only 4 of them and the movie only lasted an hour and a half so they could only feature so many meals.

In my mind I thought, "This is where the spontaneity will come in and we will end up finding the tastiest, most obscure diner on the California Coast when everyone’s hunger becomes too much to bear."  The kind of stuff good road trip memories are made of.  Little did I know, more than half the people on the bus had smart phones which were able to locate our position on the freeway and let us know how far each food stop was relative to our position.  My location was being targeted from outerspace on a couple of different handheld devices without my consent while I was watching Wayne's World on the bus television.  We had a democratic hand raise vote and we were able to find In-N-Out for three meals during the span of two 10 hr bus rides.  Nobody on the bus was disappointed with our repeat meals and the rest of the trip went off without any hitches.

If nobody had a smartphone…

As the collective stomachs of 45 fraternity brothers growled in unity the next decision was not one of choice, but one of necessity: we HAD TO stop for food.  We got off the freeway at the next exit we saw, as we did not know what culinary options were in front of us.  We ended up at Daisy’s Truck Stop Café in the heart of beautiful Bakersfield.  The side of the restaurant read:  “home of Daisy’s famous chicken pot pie.”  The danger of chicken pot pies at truck stops is that the filling of the pie is not always easily distinguishable.  That being said, it was still the most appetizing looking thing on the menu.  

The mix of alcohol and mystery pot pie was too much for all of our stomachs to handle.  An hour later down the road we had to pull over and performed a synchronize puke that could have only been orchestrated through real brotherhood.  The bond we had all shared before that was strengthened even more by that moment.

Think about it…

Does the ease of information flow in today’s day and age make for easier, more comfortable and better executed vactions, or take away from the idea of fate and chance when traveling?

I believe that the obsession with using Iphones to find your way on vacations handicaps our desire for adventure.  People are not used to going into situations uncertain about location or other's experiences due to social interaction over the internet.  The unfamiliarity with unfamiliarity causes travelers to think twice in travelling situations that used to not be as big of an issue, such as choosing a restaurant to stop at for food.

I realize that the iphone can help adventurers in ways as well.  The information received from on-line research done on these devices can lead to new and unnique experiences.  However,  I am arguing the mind set that the technology age created might cause someone to not even attempt the experience they looked up, because of insufficient information and the threat caused by the unknown when there are so many other safer choices that are easy to find out about.

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Swiss Army Phone

There are only two reasons why I would go into the Geisel library: to partake in the undie run during finals week, or to brush up on an accounting class in which I have midterm the following day and a lack of understanding of at the same time.  The stars aligned last Wednesday and the latter occurred.  I stationed myself on the first floor in the science and engineering library.  A good place to study combined with an above average social scene for a library.  The table I was sitting at, was filled with at least 10 bodies that were always interchanging but everyone was always connected to each other by at least one person. 

 Studying with others enhances the tendency to be distracted very easily.  In this day and age of portable entertainment, this tendency becomes a certainty.  This was evident by the many people listening to music, texting, and watching videos on their phones during the study session.

My distraction consisted of watching them combined with figuring out how to use my graphing calculator.  As I was crunching the numbers from my study guide, I noticed that my calculator would not turn off when I pressed the off button.  This malfunction persisted for the first hour I was in there and as time went by, a warning message kept appearing on the screen, “batteries low, change batteries.”  Twenty minutes later the calculator died.

   I gave the machine a moment of silence and asked around the table if anyone had a calculator I could borrow.  My friend next to me that was listening to her music took out her ear-plugs, pressed a few buttons on her device and put a slick looking scientific calculator right in front of me.  It turns out that iphones can take ln’s as well as make calls, play music, and surf the web.  The touch screen was very user friendly and it ended up saving my study session.  My friend was less entertained for the time being but probably absorbed a bit more information than she was while listening to the month’s top club bangers.  This turn of good fortune along with living in the age of the smartphone saved my study session.  Therefore, giving me more time to stress out about my midterm, resulting in worse grade.

Without the Smartphone Technology

Once my calculator went out of batteries, I had to calculate every answer by hand.  This does not sound that tortuous but each problem was filled with tens of calculations which involved numbers with six plus decimal places.  By the time I finished the practice test, an inconvenient blister formed on my writing hand where I was putting the most pressure on it. I got through the next set of study questions and my blister popped and grossed everyone out at the table.   My finger looked infected so I went to the health clinic on campus, got a doctor’s note and was able to skip the test.  Looking back on it, it was sure lucky that nobody had a dynamic telephone that could turn into a state of the arc scientific calculator with a flick of the wrist when I needed it.  However, I am now known as “Mister Blister” within the confines of Geisel.  I guess I’ll just have to wait a while until my next visit.

Things to think about:

Does the ability of our smart phones to multi-task makes items that used be necessary, like powerful calculators, obsolete?  And if so what does that do to the technology sector of the economy, if specialized company’s like Casio and Texas Instruments get out muscled by bigger companies like Apple and Microsoft?  Will the government have to step in and try to break up these monopolies?

The wide range of skills that phones are performing now is a danger to the economic structure of certain products but not to the technology sector as a whole.  Companies, such as the ones I mentioned before, that rely on older technological breakthroughs to survive will eventually fail.  It is the nature of the business.  At the same time Casio and Texas Instruments could be expanding to other areas of expertise without my knowledge.  The technology sector lends itself to the rise of new talents in shorts periods of time.

The separate issue of Apple and Microsoft becoming too powerful in the technology sector, especially in the smartphone sector, is a real worry.  At the beginning of the smartphone revolution the situation was worse than it appears right now.  The iphone is still leading the way, but new programs such as Android have come along to challenge the all powerful iphone.  From a consumers point of view, I finally feel like there are a good number of choices on the smartphone market at the present time even though apple still has a firm hold. 

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Butterfingers

                One of the biggest problems with being a human is our propensity to make mistakes.  My father worked as a safety engineer at a Boeing factory for more than 20 years, so the idea of accidents being unavoidable has been driven into my mind.  I bring this up because one of our most common mistakes is dropping various hand-held devices, whether it is a flashlight on a hike or a hot dog at a baseball game.  Much more daunting than both of those is the mishandling of a precious smart phone.

                Last Wednesday I was walking with my friend and she was texting, emailing, googling and taking photos on her iPhone.  Either the multitasking was too much or the rapid hand movements made her limbs too fatigued; we will never know, but before I knew it there was a big crash and I saw many pieces of her iPhone sprawled out on library walk.  More upsetting than her electronic life sitting on the ground in many pieces was my friend's reaction.  She had comparable emotions to if her puppy had just died.  On top of that, when the general public witnessed the death of such a powerful machine time just stopped and a look of “Oh my god, I can’t believe that just happened” appeared on the spectators faces.  I spent a second consoling her until I felt like the situation was getting a little ridiculous.  We picked up the pieces and discussed her next move.  It turned out she had bought insurance on it when she first purchased it.  If that was not the case I would not even want to think about the repercussions.  In all actuality the event turned out to be a small blip on the radar as she was back connected with the world on those same unsure finger-tips the very next day.

If she had broken a regular phone :

Me: “Oh no! I’m so sorry that happened”

Friend: “That’s ok,.  I got it for free with my plan.  I lost my numbers, but I’ll just make one of those awesome facebook groups where I ask my friends for their numbers.”

Me: “Great, lets go watch all of Real World Season 5.  There are a lot of fights and hook ups in it so we can get our minds off this whole situation.”

Things to think about:

Is it dangerous that we rely so heavily on technology that is very fragile and can be so easily broken or stolen?

The amount of information we store on our smartphones is a very dangerous prospect.  It is very common and dangerous for people not to back up their computers.  Most people have at least one irreplaceable document on their laptops, but still laziness wins out.  Laptops or desktops are usually pretty sturdy, however the unexpected accident is still waiting in the wings.  

This problem is magnified with the use of their smartphones.  The smartphone is much easier to break than other technologies containing similar importance and the idea of backing up numbers or daily planners in not one that is normally thought of. Besides the machines susceptibility to gravity, its size makes it a perfect target for pick-pockets.  After acknowledging these possibilities we need to come together as a society and dedicate ourselves to one of the following missions: create more durable smartphones or rely on them less.       

10 interesting ways to kill an Iphone 

Accident rates of different smart phones  

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Cowle's Mountain Night View 

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Holy Cow(le's mountain)

The night started out like any other, punching the address of our destination into one of my friend’s smart phones, while I am fiddling with an accordion style map.  A man versus machines type trial. However, this time the destination was a little different than my normal Saturday night destinations.  We were headed to Cowle’s Mountain on a night hike.  We arrived at our first destination, the parking lot at the base of the mountain, without any problems, but the big question looming in the air had to be: how would we get to the top without the help of our trusty GPS?  We started our trek; there was no specific destination, but we knew that we wanted to end at a top of something.  We just kept going up, and up, and up.  As we got about half way there, I knew we were leaving civilization in some fashion due to the exclamation of a fellow hiker, “I lost my internet connection!”  There were even a couple moments during the hike where I was able to stop and smell the mountain shrubbery (arguably just as fulfilling as roses).  We finally got to the top, munched on a Crispix-baby chocolate chip mixture, and took some light art photographs. 

After these festivities we made our way down the mountain.  This was the tricky part.  It was completely black with the exception of our flash lights, and nobody had any idea what path we took in order to reach our destination.   Our way down consisted of checking out sketchy looking paths that looked familiar to us because of their "unique" rock and dirt exteriors.  Needless to say, many of these led to dead ends.  The mounting number of dead ends led to a conversation topic: the creation of a hiking app.  This is a very common phenomenon in today's world. When something in our everyday life becomes stressful or a nuisance, we start thinking about the ways we can use our telephones to fix the nuisance.  Our hour and a half trek up turned into a three hour journey on the way down, leading to the question, “Why isn’t there a ‘path following’ app.”  In the end though, our extra-long journey led to a greater sense of self accomplishment, a tighter group feel and a more satisfying 3 am Jack In The Box run.

With the Help of a Smartphone

Let us start the story from the top of the mountain.  On we trek down, luckily we find out one of our companions owns a smartphone equipped with the map of Cowle’s mountain and has our positions pinpointed on his GPS.  The hike down was a little more treacherous, but just as fun.  We ended up getting home around midnight which gave me time to catch the end of my friend’s party.  The problem with going to parties as they are winding down is that people don’t seem to have all their wits about them at that point.  To give some lively imagery, the lasting memory of the night for me was watching a female peer throw up her Jack In The Box dinner in my friends sink; disgusting and humorous at the same time.

Not only does the intervention of the Smartphone in this situation give me different impressions of Jack In The Box but it raises of few questions :

Does this new technology get in the way of building relationships or increase chances of building more relationships? and what is its affect on team building and sense of group accomplishment?

One of the main problems with smartphone apps that aid you in some way is when the problem is affecting more than one person.  Problem solving and working with others use to be a very important skill. Challenges that sprout up should be a catalyst of building relationships and teamwork.  It has turned into a race to see who has the fastest internet connection and coolest, most innovative phone applications.

I understand the other side the other side of the argument as well.  There is no reason to make things more difficult than they have to be.  I am only saying that in some situations the process of solving a problem is just as valuable as the actual solution.

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Who the F@#% is that actress....

Late Thursday afternoon I had rendezvous with an old friend planned, on the patio outside of RIMAC.  It is a very large and wide-open space, but still has great Wi-Fi along with a generous serving of 2, 3 or 4G wireless connection.  Between Gatorade commercials, “Google” being used as a word, and cell phone technology it’s hard to keep my G’s in order these days.  The point is if there was situation that needed to be dealt with by a smart phone during the conversation, we were set, assuming she owns a smart phone.  A safer assumption than the alternative.

We began catching up on winter break and the first couple weeks of school.  I do not have an extensive history with this girl, but we did go to high-school together and are from the same area so we do have a certain sense of familiarity with each other.  Nonetheless, our conversations still dragged at points and she was not coy in letting me know with jabs like:

“So, this conversation is going well" (sarcastic tone) and “Joey, I think it’s your turn to ask some questions now.”

Finally, we chose to talk about the very safe, time-killing, but fun topic of winter break movies.  We went down the list: The Fighter, True Grit, Black Swan, King’s Speech, and Tron: Legacy.  She enjoyed talking about the actors or actresses in each.  When we finally got to the incomparable Tron: Legacy, we did not know one the main actresses. 

Joey: “Who was that hot-ass lead actress wearing the black stretchy spandex stuff the whole movie.”

Friend: “I don’t know, who was that.  Wait, its chill, I have a Smartphone.”

As I stared into space and twitted my thumbs, she logged on to IMDB and we found out it was Olivia Wilde, born as Olivia Jane Cockburn, who also starred in such TV shows as House and movies like Alpha Dog.  After that bit of information, the slow pace of our conversation resumed and the hang out session was over soon after.

Without the Smartphone

One of my greatest tricks as a conversationalist is the “who was that actor/actress in that movie, I have to know” trick.  This is especially useful because the guessing can go on for a good amount of time and provide the chance to bring up other topics in the meantime.  For example “Oh, I think it was that chick from Austin Powers, great movie, yeah? etc ….”.  Even though they are wrong guesses, they only add to the conversation. 

We were stuck on the actresses name from Tron: Legacy and guessed it was Jaime Pressly.  We had had a riveting conversation about about her great work such as My Name is Earl, and actually great work like I Love You, Man.  After a while she figured out I only brought up Jaime to kill time even though she does have an uncanny resemblance to actress in the movie.  The conversation officially ended soon after.  I think talking about My Name is Earl is a pretty good signal that the conversation lost its sizzle.  We left the conversation without figuring out the actresses name.  

                Olivia Wilde

               Jamie Pressly

Think about this...

Do smartphones add to knowledge to conversation or provide a roadblock to free-flowing discussions?

In this case I have to give the edge to smartphone intervention.  Even though it hinders conversationalists from making up facts, in a creative sense of course, the joy people get from finding answers overshadows the entertainment value of the former.  I always feel for people that have something on their mind that they cannot figure out.  For all practical purposes, whatever is on their mind will be a bigger distraction to the interaction than the couple minutes it takes for a mobile device to search the internet for a fact.  Machines are always getting faster as well, look at Watson on Jeopardy.

I do think it is annoying when people look at their phones in the middle of a conversation, but it does not automatically take away from the conversation.  If the information that is being recovered is pertinent to the conversation, the research time is worth the thumb twitting time.

conversation tips