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

[rivendellrose.livejournal.com]

I reject the notion of being accessible at all times on principle.

Not to be all "oooo, but smaaaaart phone" pod-person about it... that's exactly how I feel about cellphones in general, and exactly why I like my smart phone. I am accessible... when I want to be. If I'm meeting with people and something changes at the last minute or someone gets lost, I can see it / talk to them whether they've emailed or phoned. I can still avoid texting almost entirely, but I can check my email or see what's happening online if I'm stuck in a line or at a bus-stop somewhere, and I can use Pandora (awesome online radio) on my phone when I've lost my mp3 player (...for the last year...). And I still miss or ignore my phone half the time when it rings, whether because I've forgotten to charge it or because I'm busy and hate to answer the phone when I'm doing something else.

*Shrugs* Your mileage may vary, as with everything, but my experience is that the cell or smart phone is exactly like anything else - precisely as intrusive as you let it be. Leave it at home, mute it, turn it all the way off, or just ignore whoever the hell you don't want to deal with.

...That said, don't ever allow it access to your work email, if you do get one. That's just asking for trouble.

Oh, and interrupting phone calls or conversations to answer another (or a text, or whatever)? Yeah, hellishly rude. My mother does that, and it drives me up the freaking wall.

[icepixie]

My problem is less that phones in general make me accessible than that they create the expectation that I (or everyone, really) will be accessible. And smart phones make that expectation worse, because not only is the expectation that you're available to speak all the time there, but they create the expectation that you can be reached textually at all times too.

Definitely they can be amazing little devices when used on one's own terms, but then you have, "Oh my god, why didn't you answer your phoooooooone?!?!", which is really what I hate. At least until you train everyone who might want to get in touch with you to the idea of not-always-available. :D