I fvcking *was* you, and I gave it up to do something more interesting

[alexsarll]

"We're a nation of lazy so-and-sos," David Noone from Intervoice said. "We put the numbers in our phones so we can call a friend at the touch of just one or two buttons and we certainly can't be bothered to write them down in an old fashioned address book."
Isn't this the exact same form of 'laziness' which was decried around the invention of the written word, by people used to an oral tradition and aghast that the young folk weren't memorising entire epics anymore?
Why do some people insist on making the exact same stupid claims as the morons of centuries past? You know the ones - 'this new art form is not proper art', 'the end is nigh', 'our society is in a state of moral decline'...you could hear any of these at any time over the last 2,500 years, minimum. And on each and every occasion they were the bullsh1t whining of neophobes.

(While I was writing the above, I received about 25 blank text messages from someone repeatedly triggering their unlocked mobile. Even for me, with my alphabetical vulnerability to such attacks, I think this is a record. I am sure this provides some crowning moral about the linked dangers of lacking historical sense and an inability to cope with modern technology, but the bzz bzz bzz noise is still in my head and rather impairing my ability to form coherent thoughts)

Comments

[rentaghost31.livejournal.com]

I actually put my own number in my phone as "A" so that this wouldn't happen again. I am breathing sweet sighs of relief now.

[tiny-tear.livejournal.com]

i created fake entried for aaaaa and zzzzz so this won't happen!

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

You are both examples to us all. Mine has a temperamental lock but I still think I am, to date, innocent.

[publicansdecoy.livejournal.com]

I don't loathe moibles because of their address book overruling functions, I hate them because they take over one's life, because of all teh stupid f#cking ringtones, because of their contribution to the truly appalling txt msg spk...

-x-

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

Complaining about new-fangled slang: centuries old. Much of the language you use was once considered guilty on such counts.

Complaining about new means of communication taking over one's life: goes back at least to the telephone and telegraph. Has certainly been applied to the Internet too, and you use that enthusiastically.

Complaining about stupid fvcking ringtones: actually, on this one I'm hard pressed to disagree.

[gregjames.livejournal.com]

i dnt knw wt teh fk u r cmplng abt. ntg wrng wth tlkn lk this.

[perfectlyvague.livejournal.com]

On reading that, I immediately checked my mobile even though I have an imaginary friend called Aaaaaaaaaaaa

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

I believe you were until now the worst offender. What made that one worse was that it happened while I was in one of those vaguely seedy hybrid remainder bookshops/sechs shops, and so the vibrating crotch could easily have been misinterpreted.

[juliet]

[backs up Treo]

I would be really very fvcked if I lost my Treo (well, OK, if I lost it & the backup at the same time), given that it contains address book, diary, todo lists, random other lists, interesting notes, etc etc. I mean, I'd still have all my email/LJ contacts, so it wouldn't be a *total* disaster in terms of losing contact with people, but it would be a Serious Trial.

[contemplates likelihood of both Treo & laptop, which holds backup, getting nicked at the same time]

Actually, possibly I should start making an offsite backup at the same time as backing up onto the laptop. And I should get better about backing up my email & suchlike, as well. I'm saving up for an external HD to backup the whole laptop disk onto - on the grounds that my MP3 & photo collections would be another Great Loss.

It certainly *is* true that I used to know a lot more phone numbers by heart when I had to dial them every time. The only ones I now know offhand are my parents' number (it's been the same all my life), my own mobile number, our landline, & Pete's & Ben's mobiles (those two I deliberately learnt, so I can contact 'em in phone-broken/lost/leftbehind-type emergencies). I don't think this is *bad* per se, but I do think that it's a good idea to have a couple of emergency numbers in your head.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

I still know a few numbers, either from pre-mobile days (I still know my parents' old number, not that it's any use now) or because if I'm at work I will use my mobile as an address book but make the calls on my office 'phone.

I do copy my numbers to my tatty old address book (though not as often as I should, and it's very disorganised these days) but, though I am religious about saving old mails &c, I only ever have one copy of them (whether hard, on gmail or whatever). I suppose that might contain an element of fatalism.

[angelv.livejournal.com]

My sister text-spammed me once. She had £9.80 on her phone, and texts cost 10p. Guess how many texts she sent me?

[strange-powers.livejournal.com]

er... 7?

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

How could anyone fail to notice they were sending 98 texts?

[jamesward.livejournal.com]

198. She topped up halfway through.

[violentbec.livejournal.com]

have you noticed in my texts that i spell out every word?
i h8 tx msg spk!

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

I go for a compromise; I will abbreviate if it saves characters or time, but the grammar remains intact, and so does some of the capitalisation.

[jamesward.livejournal.com]

In fairness to David Noone, I don't think his comments were meant as a criticism, he was just summing up the findings of a report which reveals how many people rely on their mobile to keep in contact with their friends and yet don't have a backup contacts list in case they lose their phone.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

That's probably fair. But I accidentally used all my topics for today on the SB board, so I needed a story and an angle in a hurry.

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

I'm super-paranoid about my phone getting lost/nicked so I write them all down in my diary. It's not hard. Although using a pen is rather alien when you can type faster than you can think. About three years ago I had a phone that doubled up as a diary. This made life a lot easier or trickier depending on your point of view.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

At school I said I didn't need legible handwriting, because in the future everything would be typed if it was intended for anyone's eyes but my own.
As ever, I was right.

[ex-dumbgenius.livejournal.com]

When I first owned a mobile phone I could sense when it was going to ring just before it started ringing.
That worries me, in retrospect.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

I get that sometimes. It's the dawn of a symbiotic relationship, and it's beautiful.

[tiny-tear.livejournal.com]

i get that if i have it near my laptop, i get a trembling on the monitor before the phone rings/vibrates

[ex-dumbgenius.livejournal.com]

I think the point is that people are anxious about losing their contacts/friends if their phone gets lost/nicked, but are too lazy to do anything about it like keeping an address book.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

But then how many people ever used to keep a back-up address book? There has been a change (default 'address books' becoming more prone to theft) to which people have not yet adapted, is all.