Social Media is Getting Pretty Rude

People over the other day. At one point everyone was on their phones and IPADs and no one was talking. It was a little pathetic and made me wonder why we bother. Lets face it what we are doing when we are on our phones and we are with other people is we are saying you know this just isn't very interesting. You are hoping to be bailed out by something your phone can give you...an email, text, tweet...something.

And it is getting worse. Parties. Dinner. Bed. I am sure there is someone who is having sex and responding to an email. Phones now disturb our sleep. I have been woke more than once from the boop of an email or a text. We no longer control our environment someone else controls it from afar and we really should just stop the pretense of getting together. Lets just shoot each other a text and call it. How many times do you say goodnight to someone in the lunar glow of an IPAD now?

We have all been to a restaurant with the couple looking down into their lap. They are not talking. They are not interacting. They are interacting with other people who aren't even going to have dinner. So maybe the people on the other end should pick up the tab. Anyway. It is getting strange. Soon we wont even have the pretense of getting together with our physical bodies.

I know lets have our phones get together and we can be in their palms. At least we would have their attention.

www.williamhazelgrove.com
 

The Beauty of a Book...Disconnecting 2.0

I have decided that most of the stuff coming over my phone is advertisements. In fact corporations have figured out and are figuring out that we now carry billboards in our pockets. And it is getting worse. Lets talk impressions. Every time information is presented to us even if we dismiss it there is an impression. It hits us and then we move on. Now once these impressions hit critical mass then we buy. This is why we are dunned at the gas pump now and every time we turn on Pandora. They know we  ignore it but the info is stored anyway

And what better way to capture us than to attack our devices. Like most people I have several email accounts and they hit my phone at different times. Now ninety percent of what I received is absolute garbage. It is services that hit my Google  profile for my buying habits. And I enable them to get to me by carrying my device with my all the time.  The phone boops and I answer and read the ad. An advertisers dream.

And our virtual world is being invaded daily. Contextual advertising or those annoying pop ups ignited by keywords are only getting more sophisticated. GPS positioning will track us we go past Portillos and suggest we have a hot dog because we had one before and wouldn't a hot dog taste great now. That is  already here. And what defense do we have? A simple one.

Turn the phone off and read a book.. Not a kindle, a book. They can't get you then.

www.williamhazelgrove.com
The Pitcher...Junior Library Guild Selection

Living in our phones

So you are rolling along and the lady with the STOP sign holds up her hand. And so you sit there and wait and while you wait you check your phone. And there is nothing there but there might be and it is better than just sitting there because existence has become boring. And while you are waiting you see a woman who looks like she could kick your ass and she is wearing a bandanna in the smoky light of just paved hot tar and she is looking at her hand and you realize that in the middle of the hot sun breathing in the heavy petroleum wafting on that steaming asphalt she too is checking her phone. And it hits you...nobody lives in this world anymore.

Because there might be something in that phone that will take her out of this world. She might be taken away from getting cooked on a street and sucking up all sorts of toxins while hot spewing tar and asphalt is laid down by a giant machine with then guys hanging off it and suddenly you see that all these guys are staring at their hands too. They too are looking for the magic life that screen provides. Take me away. Take me to Oz. It might you know and there might be a wizard and a rainbow...anything is better than this crappy existence.

And if no one is living in this life anymore where are we living. Some sort of cyber world where a promise of something greater is just a text or an email or a tweet or a picture away. Something than this grinding malaise of the every day that is existence. And so we see cops and firemen and construction workers and soldiers and sailors and painters and sculptors...the world squinting at their hands because that little world holds so much promise.

So you check your phone one more time as the lady turns her sign from STOP to SLOW. And you proceed on and pass through the crappy world of the every day. But cheer up. There is a text or an email quivering on the horizon. Bailing us out once again.

www.williamhazelgrove.com


 

Talking Books and ending up in Technoland

It just seems technology trumps all. You start out by talking books and end up talking technology. Inevitably someone has a Kindle. So the conversation swings from the merit of a book or the suggestion of  a book to the device delivering the book. Do you have the talking kindle? Do you have the small Kindle? What screen settings do you like? Where did you get your Kindle? How much did you pay?

This then brings in the technological trump card. Phones. Who has an IPhhone and how do they like it and what do you use it for and how much did you pay and what plan and how does it compare to the Blackberry. You make small attempts to steer the conversation back to books or just about anything but the technology genie is out of the bottle.

What do you think of the IPAD? Do you use one? Did you hear about the way it converts writing into text? How about voice recognition software? Do you use that? I hear typing will be going away all together. How much did you pay for your IPAD and do you have an IPOD? You get my point. Technology is now the safe conversation. It is the ailment or weather conversation of yesteryear, because everyone can weigh in and the best thing is you did not have to read the book.

William Hazelgrove's latest novel Rocket Man is due out in September
http://www.billhazelgrove.com/