…is saving you from profound levels of boredom, and it’s a problem.
13 thoughts on “Technology”
I find it’s a race between some shiny new bauble on my smartphone and the frustration that I have to put up with idiotic software that Steve Jobs (God rest his soul) would have long ago fired someone over for not fixing it. My favorite is having to login and/or establish a superfluous user account with the printer manufacturer requiring two factor authentication, when all I want to do is to print something off my smartphone on my network-based printer at home. My 2nd favorite is trying to get Siri to understand the difference between homophonic words when trying to get directions via “hand-free” operation.
I envision the day when my silicon high tech is rapidly introduced to my metal high tech. The latter whose benchmarks are measured in calibers.
Homophonic words?
Aren’t those “hate speech”? (turns away and ducks)
Try convincing Siri it isn’t…
My smartphone is the best thing that ever happened to the doctor and dentists offices.
Likely the worst thing to happen to Time and Newsweek for the same reasons.
That’s just as well. Those magazines were filthy.
I disagree. This reminds me of one of the arguments for a universal basic income, namely, that the security of the guaranteed income will encourage people to do amazing things that they otherwise would be too risk-adverse to do. It ignores that it’s not that hard for people to do those amazing things now.
If they aren’t doing them now, then they probably won’t do them with either UBI or that special boredom.
Just spitballing, meld UBI with X-prizes.
In Robert Silverberg’s 1971 novel “The World Inside” women are compelled to have sex with any man who asks them. That would have eliminated my only reason for working. There’s plenty of food and shelter in your average dumpster. Not much pussy, though. I’m pretty sure it’s impossible for me to be bored. Horny is another matter entirely. Or was. At 72, napping is increasingly important.
Instead of writing novels, you should have been a musician?
I heard musicians “get around.”
More or less anything could have happened to me ca. 1971. I had perfect pitch and a nice singing voice (and had learned to play guitar as a yoot), so musician was my third career choice. Second was acting, as it was also a good source of female reproductive systems (and I was tall, thin, and craggy looking in an era before leading men had to look like girls*). In 1971, I was starting to audition for professional roles, when, one fine day, I got an acceptance letter from Ace Books accepting what would become my first published novel, “Hunting On Kunderer.” And that was that.
* The last role I auditioned for was Lancelot in a professional dinner theater production of “Camelot.” I think it was at Crystal Cities Marriot. I didn’t get it, but the casting director told me to keep on showing up, and to take some singing lessons to get better control over my voice.
You’ll have a hard time convincing me that the Skinner boxes that we carry around in our pockets and keep the masses from realizing how much they’re being fleeced by their “betters” are a bug, rather than a feature.
The article was really only one step away from explaining how “keeping people from getting truly bored and investigating the world around them” is also bad for the longevity of the republic, never mind other innovations.
Reminds me of the South Part take on why sitting around smoking weed was bad. After ridiculing the more-traditional reasons offered up, they said the bad thing about weed is that it makes you OK with being bored. And when you’re OK with your boredom, you’re not doing something more worthwhile like learning to play the guitar.
“We were quite poor when I was a kid, so I had just the one toy…” Beats me how anyone with a functional winkie could find time on their hands in which to become bored…
I find it’s a race between some shiny new bauble on my smartphone and the frustration that I have to put up with idiotic software that Steve Jobs (God rest his soul) would have long ago fired someone over for not fixing it. My favorite is having to login and/or establish a superfluous user account with the printer manufacturer requiring two factor authentication, when all I want to do is to print something off my smartphone on my network-based printer at home. My 2nd favorite is trying to get Siri to understand the difference between homophonic words when trying to get directions via “hand-free” operation.
I envision the day when my silicon high tech is rapidly introduced to my metal high tech. The latter whose benchmarks are measured in calibers.
Homophonic words?
Aren’t those “hate speech”? (turns away and ducks)
Try convincing Siri it isn’t…
My smartphone is the best thing that ever happened to the doctor and dentists offices.
Likely the worst thing to happen to Time and Newsweek for the same reasons.
That’s just as well. Those magazines were filthy.
I disagree. This reminds me of one of the arguments for a universal basic income, namely, that the security of the guaranteed income will encourage people to do amazing things that they otherwise would be too risk-adverse to do. It ignores that it’s not that hard for people to do those amazing things now.
If they aren’t doing them now, then they probably won’t do them with either UBI or that special boredom.
Just spitballing, meld UBI with X-prizes.
In Robert Silverberg’s 1971 novel “The World Inside” women are compelled to have sex with any man who asks them. That would have eliminated my only reason for working. There’s plenty of food and shelter in your average dumpster. Not much pussy, though. I’m pretty sure it’s impossible for me to be bored. Horny is another matter entirely. Or was. At 72, napping is increasingly important.
Instead of writing novels, you should have been a musician?
I heard musicians “get around.”
More or less anything could have happened to me ca. 1971. I had perfect pitch and a nice singing voice (and had learned to play guitar as a yoot), so musician was my third career choice. Second was acting, as it was also a good source of female reproductive systems (and I was tall, thin, and craggy looking in an era before leading men had to look like girls*). In 1971, I was starting to audition for professional roles, when, one fine day, I got an acceptance letter from Ace Books accepting what would become my first published novel, “Hunting On Kunderer.” And that was that.
* The last role I auditioned for was Lancelot in a professional dinner theater production of “Camelot.” I think it was at Crystal Cities Marriot. I didn’t get it, but the casting director told me to keep on showing up, and to take some singing lessons to get better control over my voice.
You’ll have a hard time convincing me that the Skinner boxes that we carry around in our pockets and keep the masses from realizing how much they’re being fleeced by their “betters” are a bug, rather than a feature.
The article was really only one step away from explaining how “keeping people from getting truly bored and investigating the world around them” is also bad for the longevity of the republic, never mind other innovations.
Reminds me of the South Part take on why sitting around smoking weed was bad. After ridiculing the more-traditional reasons offered up, they said the bad thing about weed is that it makes you OK with being bored. And when you’re OK with your boredom, you’re not doing something more worthwhile like learning to play the guitar.
“We were quite poor when I was a kid, so I had just the one toy…” Beats me how anyone with a functional winkie could find time on their hands in which to become bored…