Damn technology
I used to poke fun at my dad who didn’t quite get computers. Or his cell phone. Or any other electronic doohickey. Then, it happened to me. You see, I got a text message. I’d never gotten one before. My thinking is that if I got something to say and I have a phone then I’ll just call. But my assistant was running late and she sent me a text message letting me know that. I looked at it and thought maybe I should respond. So, I hit reply. Couldn’t quite figure out how to do it. Anything I typed came out like 65#733.
Also, I’ve lost the ability to write sentences by hand. I type everything. I was going to leave a post-it note the other day and my handwriting was indistinguishable from Junior’s. And she can’t write.
And I can officially no longer do math in my head or on paper. I use spreadsheets for everything so as long as I remember Please Excuse My Dear Aunt Sally, I’m OK. Unless it’s something simple, such as 17,758.67 – 9,211.10. I literally had to look at it and realize that it was just quicker to enter it into Excel than to use some ancient device known as a pencil. It’s quite sad.
April 5th, 2007 at 10:00 am
“Text messaging with a cell phone is like trying to start a fire by rubbing two lighters together.”
(Some net.wag, some time ago.)
I’m never going to understand text messaging.
April 5th, 2007 at 10:39 am
I’m never going to understand texit messaging either. Don’t have the slightest clue how to do it either — and I’ve actually designed and built a computer using wire wrap.
I was talking to my nephew once and mentioned using email — his response: email is too hard. He uses text messaging all the time; go figure.
April 5th, 2007 at 11:10 am
Billy Beck, Great analogy re: text messaging. The only value I can see is that you can talk to somebody without talking out loud.
I wished they’d make a cell phone which you can use to just call and hang up, except you don’t have anything to hang it on. Dial and close up I guess is all I need.
April 5th, 2007 at 11:14 am
heh.
I **LOVE** text messaging.
But I didn’t used to.
First, my phone is a Treo 600. It has a keyboard that you type with your thumbs. Before this phone, I had looked at PDA’s and realized that using a stylus to write each letter sucked – because my writing sucked. But this thing is a great PDA that has a phone built in.
It has a special button just for messaging. It tracks conversations in their own sections (in fact, the newer 700 puts a timestamp on the messages). Right now, I have 25 conversation logs from the past month. And I have setup filters with my Yahoo! e-mail so that I get a text message when certain people send me e-mails.
Before this phone, I usually left my phone shut off as I didn’t want to be “always available”. But with thing, I enjoy always being available. I think it comes down to having the right device and the interface being easy enough to use.
I think manufacturers try to save too much money by re-using controls on many devices, making their usage more complicated than they should be. A great example is the VCR with the flashing ’12:00′. If they had just put a few buttons dedicated to setting the date and time, it would have been easy to use and people would have done it. (Or at least had no excuse for not.)
But – setting all that aside – as a father, I can tell you something about text messaging that has turned out to be quite priceless. My kids text with me the same as they would one of their buddies. I’ve learned (and shared) a great number of things with my teenage kids that we would have never talked about face-to-face. For just a few of these conversations, I would gladly put up with all of the headaches of learning to use this thing. But being able to get so much out of it has really been a bonus. I know Jr. is too young for one now, but eventually, you’ll want to use one to keep in touch. Really.
(btw, I’m older than you are by a few years.)
April 5th, 2007 at 1:40 pm
Heh! My wife likes to upgrade our cell phones. I got tired of having to relearn each new one. This last time I just switched the SIM card from the new phone to my old one.
April 5th, 2007 at 2:45 pm
Cell phone. Why does anyone need one of those damned things, anyway?
(my wife works for, shall we say, one of the bigger cell providers in the world, and yes, I still feel the same way, regardless.)
April 5th, 2007 at 3:00 pm
trying to compose text without a keyboard is for the squirrels, ’cause that’s just nuts.
those keyboarded PDA-phones might (just) work for text messaging. except they’re too big to work as cell phones, and will have to be, to fit in the keyboard. i’m holding out for a cell phone with a morse key attachment; that might do it.
doing basic addition, subtraction, and (some) multiplication in your head is immensely useful. (8,547.57 BTW.) but my handwriting skills have not deteriorated — i never had any to begin with. been block-printing since fourth grade, when i finally gave up on cursive. (so why do i keep lusting for a fountain pen, i wonder…?)
April 5th, 2007 at 6:47 pm
I use two lighters to start fires all the time, since half run out of gas and half run out of flint.
My son and my foster nephew both run an very different schedules than I do. I can text them a few words, and they get back to me when they are up.
As for your dear Aunt Sally, I’ll excuse her this time, but it better not happen again.
April 10th, 2007 at 9:03 am
[…] mentioned my first text message here. Last night at the local poker tourney*, I got my second (and third through eighth). It was from […]
April 10th, 2007 at 11:32 am
I’ve tried the text messaging thing before. Just doesn’t do it for me, though my brother is all over it. Frankly, I hate the shorthand nature of it – beyond IMHO and LOL, I’m don’t understand them. For that matter, what does Please Excuse My Dear Aunt Sally mean. I recall it from grade school, but don’t remember what it means at all.
Anyway, all that changed when I got a
blackcrackberry. Now I message like mad, but its not really the same as text messaging, its just mobile email.April 10th, 2007 at 11:37 am
Order of operations for maff:
Parenthesis
Exponents
Multiply
Divide
Add
Subtract