I found this reading interesting because it allowed me to make a correlation to a major part of our generation's lives. I liked how the first chapter contained the question "Does the telephone make men more active or more lazy?". For starters, it made me question why men were only mentioned and not women. Second, it made me think about how much we rely on the telephone in our everyday lives. Also, it made me realize how many people still aren't privileged to have a telephone for their personal use.
My first point with regards to the question mentioning just "men" and not "women" caught me off-guard because I wasn't expecting to read that. I then realized that times were different during this period and that's most likely the reason why women weren't considered. I don't agree with this gender position, but that's another discussion. I think it would have been interesting to see if the telephone made women more active or more lazy too. This is relevant because women existed back then and their use of the telephone could have been drastically different from that of the men.
My second point is important because the use of the telephone has changed dramatically up to this point in time. Not only do we just have a telephone, but we also have a mobile phone. It's crazy to fathom the idea of being able to take a phone wherever our body goes. Due to the fact that a form of the telephone is accessible in our lives, I believe it makes us more lazy because we don't have to move if we want to speak with someone. For example if we want to talk to someone, we can just pick up the phone and discuss everything that way. This only works though if the person we want to speak to has a telephone accessible to them too.
With that being said, this question also made me think about all of the people who still don't have the privilege of being able to talk on the phone. Even though this might come to a surprise to some, it is reported that one billion people still don't have access to a mobile phone ... click here. I believe this could be a good thing for these people because it could mean that they are more active. When I stop and think about it, as much of a convenience the telephone is, it really does prevent us from focusing. Meaning, just imagine how many more things we could accomplish if we just used the telephone for necessities and avoided the distractions that have been created from this device.
I like how you highlighted the laziness debate in your article. Laziness I think has too harsh of a connotation to describe technology. Sure we can do not have to arduously do more work, but does that make us lazy? Does doing a great job the first time make us less accomplished than someone that 'tries, and tries, again'. I think maybe a better word for the article to describe other than lazy would be idle. We can accomplish more in less therefore we have more time to be idle and disconnected with the constant bustle of life. Also, I liked the way you highlighted the staggering disproportions of cellphone use in the world. We often times forget how fortunate we are to live in such a technologically advanced country.
ReplyDeleteFirst off, great post and I also liked the emphasis on laziness. When I think of the idea of laziness it’s always kind of funny to look back and think about how lazy people from the past would think we are today. Before the creation of the home phone, people would walk to the neighbor’s house to talk but of course, now you can do it by simply picking up the phone. So I don’t think its laziness but it is free time. Phones have allowed us to have a lot of free time because we don’t have to take walk. We can read or bake or do work while talking. I agree with Keith’s comment but I also think that if someone is feeling lazy, they’re going to be lazy but if they’re feeling innovative or if they feel like doing something productive, they will. Instead of the phone being something that prevents us from accomplishing tasks, I see is as a tool that can be used for laziness or for productiveness. Lastly, I don’t really know how I felt about the question in the first chapter mainly because it implies that people have an obligation to do something productive with the phone at all times. Should we? Because we are privileged enough to have phones, should we feel the need to be more productive, or creative? Although I don’t know if people should feel compelled to do something productive with the phone at all times, I do feel that productive things should be done some of the time. It’s a tough subject.
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