I keep getting disappointed at the cinema. Not necessarily by the films either, although some of the tosh I've seen at the Arc would come into that category.
I keep seeing adverts containing young, vibrant, happy people, and they're all over the world, and they're obviously having an amazing time, and I catch myself thinking, I wouldn't mind a piece of that, and then it turns out that the advert is for a mobile phone, and so then I think, no thanks, I've already got one. Or it might be an advert for a car that can recognise your mobile phone, and get all your music off it, and Facebook, and in-built satnav and all that jazz.
And it just leaves me thinking. I don't really like travelling by car, but mostly when I get in the car, it's because I want to go somewhere. So can't I just go there? Do I have to be riding in a mobile disco / social networking site / atlas type thing. All I want is to go round to the chippy.
One of the mobile phone adverts I saw. I may not have understood it correctly, but it seemed to be about taking a picture of someone else's head, and then using the phone to remember what their head looked like for next time you saw them. But I don't need one of those. I usually just use my own head for that. There's people I haven't seen for years, but if I saw them, I would probably just say 'Hey, I remember you!'. I doubt they'd say. 'Wow, how do you do it?', but if they did I might say 'Well, I've got this pile of mush inside my skull called a brain, and one of the things it can do is remember what things look like'.
And all the phones are called Galaxy or some other space agey bollocksy name. If you want to see a galaxy, try looking at the sky with the eyes in your head, not through the hand held device you're carrying. Your phone might be able to augment reality, and tell you what you're looking at, but have you ever considered just looking at regular reality, without any augmentation? I mean, does augmentation really make things look better? It doesn't seem to work on women's boobs, I'm not sure it works with the stars either.
I was out cycling the other day, and when we stopped for a breather, the Chief was checking his work emails while we waited. My own view about going for a bike ride is that I'd like to get away from stuff, I don't want it following me round. It's easy for me to say, since I don't have any work to follow me, but hey ho.
I think the message these mobile ads are trying to send me, is that there's a better life out there for me, if only I had a smart phone, that could do loads of stuff. Like if I was walking round a city, and I wanted to eat something, I could Google the nearest eating place, and ring them up, and pay for it all over the phone, and just go and collect it. Which I'm sure for some people would be very handy, but where's the adventure in that? Where's the pleasure that comes from just wandering about, looking at stuff? From getting lost?
I didn't even have a mobile phone till I was 37, and I said I wouldn't get one, and I thought texting was absolutely ridiculous, but now I've got one, and I send texts, and I've got music on my phone, so I have embraced technology to some degree, but I'm quite happy to continue to have separate things for separate things.
Like a phone for ringing people up, a car for driving places, a computer for doing email. I don't need an emailphonecar that does everything. And I'm quite happy to keep looking at people's faces, for the purposes of finding out who they are. Sometimes I can remember them, sometimes I can't. And if I need facial recognition software on my phone to remember who you are, chances are you're not all that important to me, sorry and all that. To borrow a phrase from Graeme, I don't want to have to start an electronic 'Who the fuck are you'? register. Life's complicated enough.
I keep seeing adverts containing young, vibrant, happy people, and they're all over the world, and they're obviously having an amazing time, and I catch myself thinking, I wouldn't mind a piece of that, and then it turns out that the advert is for a mobile phone, and so then I think, no thanks, I've already got one. Or it might be an advert for a car that can recognise your mobile phone, and get all your music off it, and Facebook, and in-built satnav and all that jazz.
And it just leaves me thinking. I don't really like travelling by car, but mostly when I get in the car, it's because I want to go somewhere. So can't I just go there? Do I have to be riding in a mobile disco / social networking site / atlas type thing. All I want is to go round to the chippy.
One of the mobile phone adverts I saw. I may not have understood it correctly, but it seemed to be about taking a picture of someone else's head, and then using the phone to remember what their head looked like for next time you saw them. But I don't need one of those. I usually just use my own head for that. There's people I haven't seen for years, but if I saw them, I would probably just say 'Hey, I remember you!'. I doubt they'd say. 'Wow, how do you do it?', but if they did I might say 'Well, I've got this pile of mush inside my skull called a brain, and one of the things it can do is remember what things look like'.
And all the phones are called Galaxy or some other space agey bollocksy name. If you want to see a galaxy, try looking at the sky with the eyes in your head, not through the hand held device you're carrying. Your phone might be able to augment reality, and tell you what you're looking at, but have you ever considered just looking at regular reality, without any augmentation? I mean, does augmentation really make things look better? It doesn't seem to work on women's boobs, I'm not sure it works with the stars either.
I was out cycling the other day, and when we stopped for a breather, the Chief was checking his work emails while we waited. My own view about going for a bike ride is that I'd like to get away from stuff, I don't want it following me round. It's easy for me to say, since I don't have any work to follow me, but hey ho.
I think the message these mobile ads are trying to send me, is that there's a better life out there for me, if only I had a smart phone, that could do loads of stuff. Like if I was walking round a city, and I wanted to eat something, I could Google the nearest eating place, and ring them up, and pay for it all over the phone, and just go and collect it. Which I'm sure for some people would be very handy, but where's the adventure in that? Where's the pleasure that comes from just wandering about, looking at stuff? From getting lost?
I didn't even have a mobile phone till I was 37, and I said I wouldn't get one, and I thought texting was absolutely ridiculous, but now I've got one, and I send texts, and I've got music on my phone, so I have embraced technology to some degree, but I'm quite happy to continue to have separate things for separate things.
Like a phone for ringing people up, a car for driving places, a computer for doing email. I don't need an emailphonecar that does everything. And I'm quite happy to keep looking at people's faces, for the purposes of finding out who they are. Sometimes I can remember them, sometimes I can't. And if I need facial recognition software on my phone to remember who you are, chances are you're not all that important to me, sorry and all that. To borrow a phrase from Graeme, I don't want to have to start an electronic 'Who the fuck are you'? register. Life's complicated enough.
No comments:
Post a Comment