Get off my lawn!

[icepixie]

Dear God. Apparently Google wants to be the next Facebook. Their campaign appears to be based on, "We have all the features of Facebook, but unlike those fools, we have PRIVACY. Sooo much privacy! You know who's got privacy? We do! Look at all this privacy up in here!" Plus features that I didn't pay much attention to because I don't have a smart phone.*

I truly believe that one day, we will wake up to find that Google has taken over the governments of every nation on Earth, and has a unified world government in beta.



* One day in not too many years, a cell phone that's more computer than voice-transmission device is going to be required to join modern society, much in the way landlines were in the middle of the twentieth century and computers with internet access are becoming now, aren't they? Ugh. I don't deny they're handy, but I reject the notion of being accessible at all times on principle. I might be doing nothing more than staring at a wall in my free time, but it's still mine, and not to be infringed upon. As well, I've really grown to dislike the experience of trying to talk someone when they're interrupted by texts every twenty seconds. It's so rude! I just want to slap the phone out of people's hands when they do that.

...I have officially turned into an old lady.

Comments

[gamesiplay.livejournal.com]

...I have officially turned into an old lady.

This is how I feel, too. It's actually a little genuinely uncomfortable sometimes, because I feel like in the past few years the pace of change in technology--and particularly social technology--has increased exponentially. And for a variety of reasons, I haven't really bothered to keep up on it, so where five years ago I felt pretty Internet-age savvy,* now... I honestly feel a bit like my parents felt back then. :/ I neither read nor use Twitter; I don't regularly read blogs; I get on Facebook maybe once every few months; I only just figured out what Tumblr is, and forget anything more recent than that; all I know about my phone is that I can call people on it and the service is Verizon; I couldn't define "smartphone" if I tried; I barely know what tablets and iPads are; I still think DVR is the most mind-blowing and magical thing in TV ever, and I get the feeling that by now it's been around, like, a looong time; and it's not that I hate ALL of those things or look down on people who use them, but... I don't even really want to get up to speed. And sometimes that makes me feel like, Man, I'm kind of going to get screwed by The Future, I'm going to be totally out of the loop, when did I become a Luddite?

Anyway. God, that whole paragraph is simultaneously so old-lady-yelling-at-youngters-from-front-porch AND so old-scifi "but what about when the computers become sentient and ENSLAVE US?" that it's embarrassing. But seriously, dude. I cannot adapt! Darwin would hate me!

(*remember back when some blogs weren't practically part of the mainstream media? remember when most people had no idea what fanfiction was? remember when only geeks wrote on the Internet about anything at all? remember when only "losers" looked for dates online? remember when YouTube was nothing but songvids? [exaggeration; I actually can't remember what was on it back then or even really when I first became aware of it.] remember when THERE WAS NO FACEBOOK? Not gonna lie, I had more fun back then.)

[icepixie]

YES! YES TO ALL OF THIS! Pretty much since I got out of undergrad, I've fallen further and further behind in the technological arms race. I got myself an LJ, my own domain for hosting things, a bare-bones Facebook presence, and just...stopped. That's all I need. The rest is duplication, and generally in a lesser format. (140 characters, really? Screw that!)

I do like new hardware, but generally for practical reasons. I like my dad's iPad is because it's easier to surf the internet on when lying in bed than a laptop is, and my wacky back no longer allows me to spend all day at my desk. Smart phones...I definitely see the benefits of being able to get directions to the nearest whatever on the fly and things like that, but still have no burning desire to own one. HD TV is definitely prettier than the older kind. DVR is still completely magical to me as I have yet to actually see it in action, but I kind of want it. (My family has actually regressed in this area, as the DVD/Blu-Ray--which, for the record, I don't see much improvement with--machine we have now doesn't have a record function. Thankfully, everything's online now so I don't have to record anything...) But I would probably not even NOTICE half these things if my dad wasn't into the latest and greatest technology.

And sometimes that makes me feel like, Man, I'm kind of going to get screwed by The Future

That's the same feeling I get when I think about how web design has progressed. I used to have a shot at getting a job that required a bit of HTML/Dreamweaver knowledge in addition to other things I could do. CSS completely passed me by, though, and I'm about six years behind on internet savvy.

I, too, liked the internet more when it was the exclusive domain of geeks. Not so much because it was exclusive and this made me feel cool, although there was that, but also because only people who really wanted to talk about geeky things were on it, so there was less dross to wade through. Also (and yes, I am a horrible classist pig for saying this), when Facebook and its ilk wasn't ubiquitous and online blogging and social media required some intelligence to access, readers reaped the fruits of that intelligence. Now we have textspeak. And I cry.

[rowdycamels.livejournal.com]

I will be a horrible classist pig with you, because reading YouTube comments makes me weep for humanity.

[icepixie]

*single emo tear*

[gamesiplay.livejournal.com]

I got myself an LJ, my own domain for hosting things, a bare-bones Facebook presence, and just...stopped.

Yes. This. I haven't been interested in What's New in Social Media since I got a Livejournal (well, I mean aside from Dreamwidth, but Dreamwidth is essentially the same technology).

I do definitely see the use of portable devices on which you can get the Internet. Actually, almost every single person know has an iPad or some kind of whatever-phone, to the point where if I'm wandering around lost somewhere, I think, "Oh, I'll just pull up Google Maps! ...oh wait, that's everyone else's phone that can do that, not mine." So, yeah. That does make sense. I guess my only reservation there is that, weirdly, I don't want to have Internet access everywhere all the time. (This is why when we used to go on family vacations, I would OMG LEAVE MY LAPTOP BEHIND and be unreachable by email for a week or so.)

My father won a case for a client who sells... TV... stuff (I DO NOT EVEN KNOW), and my dad agreed to let him pay it back in services... which meant we got a free TV with DVR installed for free as a sort of family Christmas present. :) I doubt we would've ever gotten it otherwise, honestly. I mean, my family still has (lots of) videocassettes.

but also because only people who really wanted to talk about geeky things were on it, so there was less dross to wade through. Also (and yes, I am a horrible classist pig for saying this), when Facebook and its ilk wasn't ubiquitous and online blogging and social media required some intelligence to access, readers reaped the fruits of that intelligence.

THIS. SO MUCH. That's one of the things I do like about Dreamwidth, actually; it's much more articulate-geek-centric, and I miss that elsewhere.

[icepixie]

This is why when we used to go on family vacations, I would OMG LEAVE MY LAPTOP BEHIND and be unreachable by email for a week or so.

Okay, that I do find it difficult to do. I want the option of checking e-mail and LJ, just not the obligation. Picky, I know. ;)

That's one of the things I do like about Dreamwidth, actually; it's much more articulate-geek-centric, and I miss that elsewhere.

I actually haven't noticed a lot of difference in that area, but I think it's because I avoid the areas of LJ that aren't articulate-geek-centric. Though come to think of it, when someone gave me some paid time over there, I perused my "network" a few times, and it was definitely more interesting to read than my friendsfriends here, which I avoid like the plague. (Though if there was a way to just read personal journals on friendsfriends, rather than be subjected to the communities--UGH, ONTD--I'd be more interested.)