Oliver Burkeman's Inconvenient Truth

FujiLove said:
I caught this program on radio 4 yesterday. It throws up a few ideas which seem relevant to the continued use of film.

www.bbc.co.uk

BBC Radio 4 - Oliver Burkeman's Inconvenient Truth, Other People

Oliver Burkeman explores the insidious way in which convenience has warped our existence.
www.bbc.co.uk www.bbc.co.uk
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Not photography related but the mention of children's reluctance to talk to someone, anyone, on a phone is spot on. My two are twenty and twenty three and are applauded should their phones ever receive a voice call why talk to a person when various instant messengering systems exist, conversely they expect me to have apps which I have never heard of to eliminate the need to talk.
One of today's generation gaps.
 
zx9 said:
Not photography related but the mention of children's reluctance to talk to someone, anyone, on a phone is spot on. My two are twenty and twenty three and are applauded should their phones ever receive a voice call why talk to a person when various instant messengering systems exist, conversely they expect me to have apps which I have never heard of to eliminate the need to talk.
One of today's generation gaps.
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Why bother with all the hellos, pleasantries, small talk, and goodbyes, when the key facts of a twenty minute chat can be completed by text in 30 seconds?

In fairness to young people, it took me 45 years to understand life is about the journey, not the destination.
 
I'm a smart phone hater ! sometimes I enter the canteen at work and at least 80% of people are on their phones ignoring each other ( I call them phone zombies) I also see couples in the local pub having a meal not talking but both staring into a phone with the odd swipe.
I'm not sure if any of you heard the recent story of a child on the school bus who had been banned from phones by his dad ? He was on the school bus and the driver had a medical emergency, as he was the only kid not staring into the God phone he managed to pull the bus up safely and avoid any one being hurt.

I do think humans have lost many abilities and it seem to be getting worse as tech advances. Young people and this is only because of tech now cannot read a map, spell as they have spell checkers on their phones and that's all they ever use ( I can't spell either but that was a result of an education in Thatchers Britain) They struggle to communicate with real people, bully each other via the internet ( at least bullies had to be tough in the old days as someone might actually plant one on them) O.k I'll stop ranting now !
 
I seek out the 'friction' but then I am an extrovert who was born in the 60's. I learn a lot from instances of friction.

I've always been a proponent of valuing the input at least as much if not more than the output and to truly value it you need to engage with it IMHO. I apply the same thought to the journey and the destination. As @FujiLove said, it is likely something that only comes to us in time though I do my best to espouse the ideas to the younger people I meet.
 
How did we speak to people in different places before phones...
 
Pound Coin said:
How did we speak to people in different places before phones...
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I once lived on the Island of Malta ( before mobiles phones + my family never had a phone) So all our communication was done by letter, I would always send my mom the new Maltese stamps ( she was a big collector) and I always looked forward to a letter from friends and family and always appreciated them, on the other hand phone calls always seem to come at the wrong time ! The reason we never had a phone in the house was because my dad said people keep ringing you on them ! As a kid this baffled me as surely that's what they were for ? Now I understand !. I think this is even worse now with people sending each other totally pointless media of a dog peeing on an electric fence or some other crap. (I do have a smart phone it was given to me) but I restrict who has the number and don't use social media.

Just as an add on later I lived in Cornwall and as me and my father were both radio Hams at this point we kept in contact using Packet radio much like the old telephone BBS system.
 
Pound Coin said:
How did we speak to people in different places before phones...
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When I was at university we used telegrams quite a bit. For example I still have one that simply says 'Town Hall Square 7pm Dave'. A call to assemble for a pub crawl.
 
I found the programme's delivery tedious and boring; sufficiently so that after jumping through it a few times, I just gave up.

That's not to say that there was no useful information. I can imagine that if it had been in written form, I might well have found it useful.
 
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