Pocket sized big brother

Now there is this hype about TV on the cell phone as well as the internet and just about everything else .

Maybe it's just me in my old age , I just got a cell phone to be able to make a call if needed or so my wife could contact me anytime just in case . No camera that you now see so many people holding up as some sort of beaming device to the gods , crowds full of them .

So I wonder in the age of wire tapping and GPS who is watching you on that little screen and if not yet how long before they will be watching every move you make and monitor your heart rate and see if you smoke pot or anything else that sets you up as some type of criminal .

I don't want any part of this , do people feel the need to be entertained 24/7 that this technology is so desired . What happened to personal thought or times of reflection or time with a pet or a good book .

Do people really want technology to take over and consume their entire life . There are I-pods and I-phones and TV / tella screens everywhere now you can carry on in your pocket .

People do not even have the choice now , there is no way to avoid technology , it's everywhere because it sells and does it's own selling and forces older people completely out of the picture and brainwashes the youth . What's next , implanted hardware and a visit to the doctor tech to do the ungrades ?

It's actually new enough, pretty damn small, too, and cheap, and it gets a signal EVERYWHERE. But I don't marry it to a credit card, I recharge it with those buy-em-at-the-store cards and I almost never use it--emergencies or quick calls only, pretty much.

It does get harder to keep up with all the new shit as you go on. I still have to convert all my home video tapes to DVD...!

I use a Tracfone with nothing fancy. While it can text message, voice mail, etc. I haven't even turned those features on. I use it when I'm out of the house and only about 5 people even have the number. My wife's is the same thing. Never had a dropped call or connect problem and costs me less than $10/mo to use.

That was the only optional ring tone that didn't sound like a ring!!

I got it on sale with a load of free units, too! It even has a loudspeaker feature, so when someone calls me in the car, I just punch that button and throw the phone on the pax seat, and I can talk hands-free without any of that headset or fancy bullshit.

a few CD's since you can't get cassettes anymore and I still have LP's .Of course if my cassette decks die then I'm screwed because no one seems to sell new ones anylonger . I guess then I hum the tunes .

I just never saw the point of converting over to new tech crap when the old stuff still works fine , I don't have money for this and I don't want to support the cheap global labor force anymore than I am already forced to and I do mean forced .

Get one in good shape, then, when you HAVE to, put all your cassettes on CDs! That'll be a drill to figure out, but at least you'll have the equipment to do it...!

I have a load of vinyl--AND a hi-fi. It's really a conversation piece, but it works like a champ. The vinyl sounds good too. You can also get tons of records at the Salvation Army, for cheap, too!!

But look what happened. Big Brother did not have to put a monitor in every home, on every street corne;, and in every hallway, nook, and cranny. We did it ourselves.

at the same time, and sort the data, seperate the wheat from the chaff. Harder than it sounds, and it sounds hard enough.

to achieve the same thing, the key is access. If BB can simply access any info at any time, direct monitoring is not needed.

The scariest thing is just how little we generally understand about how things work. We are becoming totally dependent on devices and technology that hardly any of us have more than an extremely superficial knowledge of. There are no happy endings in this situation.

Noting how the price for storage of all this data has become so outrageously low it is now allowing spying for the masses. Yes, it's not going to be the government spying on us, but corporations and private entities who then sell the information to the government. Your tax dollars at work.

It's only a matter of time before cyberpunk--or at least some variety of it--becomes reality. My wiffe and I don't even have a land-line, and don't miss it. If my phone rings, I know it's for me, and the caller ID tells me if it's a call I should answer or if it's one I can ignore--like any coming from a number I don't recognize. The cell phone cameras suck and why would one use one when one has a very nice digital camera already? And I happen to like my ipod shuffle very much, thank you. I use it primarily to listen to audio books when puttering around the house doing terribly boring stuff like washing dishes or cooking dinner. No, I don't want a video ipod. I like watching movies and stuff sitting comfortably in my chair with my laptop working on my next novel at the same time.

I'm 41, and fairly comfortable with new technology. With new anything in general. Mostly. I don't get these kids and their obsession with "texting--" to me it looks like a major pain in the ass. Of course, they can do it quietly and unobtrusively--I've caught a few doing it at work while on the clock and have warned them that if they're caught by someone with actual authority, they could be in deep doodoo.

But, hey. I was 13 when the first line of handheld video games came out. Silly football and basketball games that used blips of light to represent players. I remember pong. I remember eight-track tapes and vinyl, when "state-of-the-art" was reel-to-reel.

I work with kids, lots of kids, most of whom are young enough to be MY kids...though I didn't have kids until I was in my late twenties. All the things I remember from my childhood and teenage years are meaningless to them. But, then again, many of the things my father remembers from his childhood and teenage years were meaningless to me.

I don't really think any criticism is all that meaningful. The world changes. My dad's stepdad was a cowboy in his youth. A real, herding cattle cowboy. My dad used to get in big fights with him over whether we'd land a man on the moon.

Things change. As the Taoists say--change is the only constant.

I am 59 , when the main focus as it is now is all on technology then what we end up with is a society with the same focus . The simple things that were enjoyed by all can now only be enjoyed by those who can afford it , this allows a gap in the youth .

It also allows military advancements that cause greater destruction with little effort which is where most of the money goes .

I don't want to be tracked and recorded and have everyone knowing what products i buy or know where I am or where I have been . Even being a good citizen is then stripped away and questioned .

We have the internet in our hands and yet people know less about the world or life and more about which button to push . It breaks down the family unit more and more . It separates generations more , what my parents had was not all that different from what I had so we could relate better .

I imagaine in time when the old fart like me die off the separation gap will close some or it could widen depending on how rapid the advancements .

You were not required to update a record player every year as with computers and programs so items remained useful longer and you did not require a specialist to fix your car or change the needle in the record player .

Now we have opened the flood gates and they will never slow or hault . The things we should have used the technology for such as cars running on solar power were ignored but the bomb and the carrier are advanced .

Certainly there are medical advancements but are reserved for those who can afford it . This is the direction I speak of . Technology clashes with nature and nature has the power to change it all as does the bomb .

is quite wide. On the other hand, the gap between mine and my children is quite small in comparison. I listen to a lot of the same music, I understand the technology that influences their world, and I don't see it as nearly as divisive as you do.

My father understands NOTHING about any of this new technology. Nothing. It's ironic because he knew it was coming for decades. :shrug:

My father was 33 when I was born . The world in general refering to technology was not all that much more advanced . A phone was a phone and a car a car and everyone knew how they worked , schools still had the same sort of structure as did much of everything else . The TV was not in every home and the radio had the same sort of programs .

Certainly there was a difference in taste in music and clothes however techically much had not changed . So there was a common ground .

I had to adapt to computers since they became common place in the home and business for me that was around 1998 . Before that I could get along quite well with what I had . The guitar still had six strings on it .

I never got into the latest gizmo even in music .

Since 1998 alot has changed in technology , except I still don't have an interest in it until I have no choice then it's the basic stiff .

You could say I was born at the wrong time to be up on technology . It all depended on what one did for a living for me .

Woodworking tools are still tools , I worked for ford for 33 years and the changes were gradual so you learned as you went , not that difficult if you understand eletrical circuits . The trouble with the auto is they have adapted computer technology and married it with the old internal combustion engine and all other assorted controls which are still old technology .

If you live in a large urban area and have a cell phone, your every movement is probably being monitored. They quietly rolled out cell phone signal monitoring a few years back as a "traffic control measure" stating that it would allow up to the minute monitoring of traffic jams, etc., and promising that this was all done anonymously. But if they can monitor where your cell phone is on the streets, they can also monitor where your cell phone is off the streets also. And if you think that the promise of anonymity is a valid one, I have a bridge to sell you.

They could defiantly put GPS tracker on your cell, or even a RFID chip, but I doubt anyone would be watching you through a camera phone.

Now what I really worry about are CCTV on street corners, like some places in Britain.

I know my phone has some GPS thing in it , my old phone broke and they would not activate the used one I got because it did not have the chip .

Stores and employers have cameras and one has to wonder what subliminal messages are sent through that horrid musak heard in most stores .

They have TV screens in a new rite aid here now , who knows what's watching you there .

We are all suspect and criminals now even if we are not guilty and if we do one thing wrong we may not even be allowed a lawyer .

Trust no one , that's not the way I hoped we would have to think .