Consumed by technology, the real world awaits
IREALISED early the other morning just how much of my brain I had handed over to my smartphone. I lay in bed in the pre-dawn darkness listening to the waking world outside and thought I heard the gentle hiss of rain on my roof. Could it be raining? I reached for my phone and clicked on the weather app to check. Immediately I felt very embarrassed and glad nobody had seen me.
Any normal person who wanted to see if it was raining would simply look out of the window. Instead my first impulse had been to look at my smartphone. What’s happening here? We’re all panicking about “state capture” but maybe we should be more concerned about “brain capture”.
I wondered what I would have done if the phone had told me it was a sunny day and I’d dressed in sandals and shorts and walked out into pouring rain. Would I have been irritated with the weather for not complying with my phone? I doubt whether I would have been cross with the phone for being wrong. We believe what our phones tell us. If the weather doesn’t match the app then it’s probably the weather that’s got it wrong.
I have a friend who uses his GPS to guide him wherever he goes in his car. He seldom actually needs it because he usually travels along routes he has taken many times before.
I suspect he simply needs a back-seat driver telling him: “turn left in 200 metres” even when it’s his own driveway that’s 200m ahead.
I’m sure we’ve all experienced the “Wikipedia race,” when a normal conversation turns into a frantic scramble to see who can be first to find the definition of a word on their phones.
“Here it is. It says here a kelpie is a water sprite usually in the shape of a horse.”
The sad part of this is that many of the things on Wikipedia are just plain wrong.
Anybody can put stuff on Wiki whether they’re true or not. Even the Wikipedia editors warn us they can’t be 100% accurate all the time.
People used to say “history is written by the victors,” but I suspect future history will be written by the hackers.
Just a few clicks on the keyboard and I could turn my grandfather into Baron Graaf von Middelburg, Conqueror of the Karoo. (I don’t think he would have liked that. He enjoyed being a sheep farmer.)
History students would look him up in Wikipedia and write him into their essays and people would believe in him because he featured in the Wiki app on their cellphones.
Just as I almost believed the Weather app on Windows rather that checking the real windows in my bedroom.
Sometimes we need to get back to the real world. (Incidentally, it was not raining.)
Last Laugh
The guest speaker sat down after making a very long after dinner speech and turned to his neighbour: “Well, how did you like my speech?” He asked. “I found it very refreshing,” came the reply. “Really?” beamed the speaker delightedly. “Refreshing, you say?” “Yes very refreshing. “I felt like a new man when I woke up.”