Are Smart Phones Antisocial?

It is easy to complain about technology - its easy to become critics of smartphone use especially amongst the young. Sometimes I agree - most of the time I do not. We are changing, it may be good, it may not. For whatever reasons you want to stick to the past, there are many trying out new ideas and new opportunities. 

Sony Walkmans, the antisocial scourge, iPods also the antisocial scourge? Yet I would rather have others keep their musical tastes to themselves while I listen to my own bad choices in music.

Are we approving of a child who has their nose in a book because it is a long established tradition - do we think less if it is a graphic novel. I recall tube travel in the 1980’s and 90’s when ignorant souls would stuff their broadsheets into my face - absorbing news, bias and hearsay.

There is an element of etiquette, there are times when young and old alike should be paying attention. Chances are if a adolescent is with a group of adults that you are part of and personally disconnecting by using their phone. You are all:
  • Boring
  • Not bothering to engage them in terms they understand

I can only wish for such distractions in my youth - remembering being bored silly in some social settings. At this point I hear some wittering soul babble that boredom is good. The bad news (for you, you still wittering fool) is that boredom often leads to mischief - at least for me.


So … are our youth disengaging via smartphones, or is an older generation still doing what it is good at. Boring our youth senseless. If so - please do become more interesting, engage with youngsters and you may find that some of the younger souls in your audience may both engage and have some very interesting things to say. 

It is worth a punt.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Wikipedia editors never walk alone: Hillsborough changes can be traced ... from @ConversationUK

Image
By Andrew Smith , The Open University According to the Liverpool Echo , UK government computers have been used to make offensive comments on the Wikipedia page detailing the 1989 Hillsbourgh Disaster over a number of years. The newspaper reports that revisions to the page have been made from computers using the government’s secure intranet since 2009. They include insults to Liverpool fans and a comment suggesting that fans were responsible for the football ground disaster, in which 96 people died. This case highlights the continual issue of trolling and cybervandalism on Wikipedia. It also shows how journalism is using good, technical forensic tools at the disposal of every cybercitizen. Cybercitizens can be good or bad So many of us use Wikipedia on a daily basis that it is one of the most visited websites in the world. Yet not that many of us really understand how it works. Wikipedia is based on the principle that the community can create, edit and refine pages covering
Read more

If airlines offer in-flight Wi-Fi, they should invest in an extra black box for security ...

Image
Yijun Yu , The Open University and Andrew Smith , The Open University In-flight Wi-Fi is one of the most sought-after facilities for air travellers these days, now that laptops and smartphones are so common and so much of our working and personal life revolves around online services. But a US Government Accountability Office report has suggested that many in-flight wireless networks could expose the plane to being hacked or remotely controlled . In fact it’s of such a concern to US authorities that when a well-known computer security expert made an admittedly ill-thought-out joke about doing so on Twitter, he was promptly arrested, his computers confiscated, and subsequently banned from the airline . And all he was suggesting was to make the oxygen masks drop down. So it would appear that the stuff of Hollywood may jump from fiction to fact: Liam Neeson and Julianne Moore starred in the 2014 film Non-Stop , where a passenger hacking the aircraft’s internal wirel
Read more

Highlights and lowlights of 2014, a golden year for cybercrime from @ConversationUK

Image
Looking back, 2014 was not a good year for keeping things safe under digital lock and key. If a score was being kept, it might seem that the cybercriminals are in the lead, despite the valiant efforts – and own goals – from the cybersecurity profession worldwide. Cast your mind back to March , everyone was panicking about the HeartBleed bug. Based on an error in code upon which the majority of the world’s secure servers relied, experts had plenty of time to fix the issue. Sadly there was an array of conflicting information about changing passwords, leading to widespread confusion. While most IT administrators made sure this was managed in a professional manner, it created a stir that seemed to set the tone for the year. In May , online auction giant Ebay admitted to having been compromised. The site said its systems, with personal details of tens of millions of users, may have had been vulnerable for months. Everyone was advised, indeed forced, to change their password. In the
Read more