I recently purchased an iPhone, and am totally obsessed with its brilliant technology. As such, I commonly strike up conversations with people about what apps they have on their iPhone or Droid in my constant quest to find the next cool thing to make my life a little more fun or easier. I’ve found that I get one of two reactions to this line of questioning.
1. I meet a common spirit who eagerly whips out his or her own device and starts chattering away about favorite games, or subway navigation tools, or music
2. I am on the receiving end of a rant about how technology is ruining our lives
The latter usually includes remarks about how Facebook puts too much personal information out there for the world to see, and they are sick of being bombarded by stupid updates about what people they don’t even like are eating for dinner. They do not need to broadcast their lives to the world. Or they rant about how useless Twitter is, and how society is disintegrating into 140 character blurbs (this is always accompanied by misuses of the word tweet: especially tweeted, twit, twittered, etc.). Then the whole thing is summed up by making fun of people’s statuses posted on Facebook, or questioning the legitimacy of news stations who post headlines to twitter before running them on TV.
My response is usually two fold. Facebook implemented privacy settings and the unfriend button for a reason. If you’re not using them, it’s only because you are A. too technologically unsavvy to be on Facebook in the first place, or B. Covering up your secret fascination with the lives of those you claim to hate with a thin veil of disdain. As for Twitter, it’s called creating a tweet when you post and it is a valuable way to harness news sources with up to the minute coverage that you choose to follow. No one is going to twist your arm into reading what the Kardashians are posting. You can even sign up to follow others, and don't even have to post anything yourself. These are vehicles of social media that allow wonderful feats of keeping in touch that were quite simply not possible even as recently as when I started college.
Where’s your sense of wonder? I mean, lets be real here. The internet was invented (invented!!) during our life times, and now things are advanced enough that I can get my phone to “listen” to a song, identify it’s singer and title, and let me download it on the spot in seconds. I can take a picture of an unfinished Sudoku, and receive a result key. I can play scrabble against friends in real time on different continents. What is so wrong with that?
Things change. The world becomes more globalized. You can choose to jump on board and keep up with the times, or be left behind with all those people who were too stubborn to learn how to use a computer because it was just a passing fad. Look at how well that turned out for them.
And for the record, my favorite apps are: Facebook, Fruit Ninja, Shazaam, Pandora, Words with Friends, DerManDar, Twitter, and Istaverse.
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