(Nov 25, 2014 07:45 PM)Magical Realist Wrote: I guess I'm what you call a critical luddite.
I am too. I don't usually talk about it online though, since doing so only seems to get me sneered at and insulted.
Quote:I only got a computer like 3 years ago.
I've had several computers. (I've never had a computer that I bought new, though.) What I don't have is high-speed internet at home. Right now, I'm using an old 1990's Toshiba laptop (that I got from a friend for free) running Windows 2000 over a free dial-up connection to write this.
Occasionally websites 'upgrade' and 'improve' to the point they become incompatible with my old browser. People on the internet sneeringly say 'upgrade your browser!' (Except that newer browsers won't work with Windows 2000.) So people on the internet sneeringly say 'upgrade your operating system!'. (Except this old computer doesn't have enough memory to support them.) So people on the internet sneeringly say 'buy a new computer for God's sake!' (Except that new computers don't work with dial-up.) So people on the internet sneeringly say 'Jeez, get high-speed internet like everyone else!' (And pay for it like everyone else.)
So I'm supposed to pay hundreds of dollars for a new computer and who knows how much a month for broadband, just to make a bunch of tech-snobs happy? This machine that I'm pecking on still does everything that I want it to do, and does it very well too. All for free. It doesn't (and never has) cost me anything. I visit the websites that I like and read my many e-books on it, and that's basically all I ever use it for, that and occasional e-mail. In fact, this old computer still has a DVD-drive and I can watch movies on it too. (Newer computers no longer come with a drive.)
I've never in my life visited Facebook or Twitter (let alone any of the cooler places where the hip kids go these days) and don't anticipate ever doing so. I'm anti-social, I guess, because 'social media' doesn't appeal to me in the least.
Quote:I don't have an IPOD.
Neither do I.
Quote:And I still don't own a cellphone.
I do have a cellphone, but in my defense I point out that it's a prepaid dumb-phone.
Quote:I question the latest trend to gadgetize.
The 'tech' industries are really the only part of the US economy that's growing these days. It's supposed to be the tide that lifts all boats, so you had damn well better keep buying all the gadgets and paying for all the increasingly meaningless 'upgrades'.
Except that all the tech manufacturing jobs have already been outsourced to Asia, so the people raking in all the money are a smaller and smaller group of richer and richer Mark Zuckerberg types. They may be multi-billionaires but they still need your money, so buy, buy, buy, MR! No excuses! (I don't know who is supposed to keep buying though, given the implosion of the old American middle-class.)
Quote:I critically evaluate the need for having to be so connected to people elsewhere that I am displaced from my immediate enviroment.
It's kind of amazing how so many people stumble through life or stand there frozen, while staring at a cell-phone. We've all witnessed people in restaurants or public transit who are there, but yet at the same time not-there, having loud animated (and extremely annoying) conversations with... nobody.
In the good old days, people who talked to themselves in public were crazy. Now they are cool urban professionals. So... my suggestion is to just give all the street-crazies little pieces of plastic to hold up their ears while they rant. Problem solved.
Quote:I'm amused at people's shock when I tell them I don't own a cellphone. It's like I have leprosy or something. What's wrong with you! What if you get lost? What if you need to dial 911? Then I'll just deal with it.
I just saw in the news where New York City is removing the last of its payphones. They used to be everywhere. I'm having trouble remembering when I last saw one around here.