Recent Events

I accidentally set my wristwatch to beep on the hour today.  It got me thinking about how it takes society a while to figure out the acceptable social behavior whenever new technology comes along.  When watches started showing up with the “chime on the hour” people (especially nerdy engineers) naturally turned on that function just because they could.  It was a neat toy.  I can remember driving to work and noting where I was each day when my watch beeped.  Was I running fast or slow that day?  I didn’t have to look at my watch to know.

This feature was very annoying at big meetings.  Since everybody’s watch was off by a few seconds whenever the top of the hour was reached a staggered wave of little beeps washed across the meeting room.  Eventually the novelty wore off and the utility of the function was really marginal anyway.  Now you rarely see someone with that setting activated.  It was available so we used it.

Next it was pagers then cell phones and the growing capability they provide from texting to video to surfing the web.

Some of the offensive use of cell phones have been established by society although they are not universally avoided.  Talking in restaurants for example.  The problem is that we have a generation coming into adulthood that doesn’t remember a time when you were not in constant contact with the world and feels that there is something wrong if you are not available  to the net.

With blogging and Facebook and twitter and texting we are becoming addicted to the electronic world.  So much so that we can’t drive or gather socially without texting or talking or surfing.  Even on dinner dates you see people texting or reading texts instead of talking with on another. They have their hands in their laps and head down doing what is called the Blackberry prayer.  Yes we old-timers can remember a time when you only had a phone at home or in a phone booth and it wasn’t rare to completely lose track of high school and college friends for the rest of your life.

We had a high school student killed here recently.  She was texting while driving.  Her message was “ I’m on my way to school”.  Her Dad has started a don’t text and drive campaign and has placed her car in front of the high school she attended to hammer home the point.

I hope we will realize, like with the watch that can chime on the hour, that just because we can do something doesn’t mean we have to.  We need to cut that invisible cable sometimes and see that it is OK.  We might even do some real thinking and come up with a new privacy app .

Oh, and you don’t have to worry about beeping watches.  The new generation doesn’t need to wear watches to know the time.  They check their phone or IPAD or whatever gadget they carry.