I was in an interesting conversation with the Colonel the other day. We were on our regular Friday walk from the centre of Gowca up to Scapegoat Hill and on to the farm shop café on Bolster Moor. Unusually, the Colonel and I found ourselves the only ones left standing, all the other soft warts from the W.A.R.T.S. walking group had previously chickened out for various pathetic reasons that left their membership hanging by a thread.
This is Bolster Moor, the farm shop is the building with the green roof at the top right-hand corner, the adjacent café is in the process of its second extension due to its well-deserved popularity.
Putting the world to rights
The Colonel is a retired local GP of some renown, even though she is from that place darn sarth, she very quickly adopted the Yorkshire way of saying things as they are, and to hell with the consequences. She once ‘encouraged’ an old dear who had been whinging and moaning for months by saying “chin up, with what you’ve had you should be dead”! She is very intelligent and well-read, and will analyse everybody and every situation. Our conversation last Friday was, as is often the case, way over my head, but I tried to keep up.
We eventually spoke about the value of smartphones or, in my humble opinion, the lack thereof. My phone is a Dora 2404 apparently designed for old people for phoning in or out with as little fuss and palaver as possible, which I have to say is ideal for Moi as a way of checking up on my whereabouts. But if it was left to me, the world wouldn’t have telephones at all. For good or bad, smartphones can bring the whole world into our back pockets and handbag and there are many aspects of this whole world that are best kept well away from our back pockets.
Pocket prying
This work of the devil can of course have many apparent useful applications. Apps that tell us where we are, and where we should be. Maps and timetables to tell us that the next train or bus has been cancelled. They add up our shopping the instant we put an item in our basket – and remind us what our previous shopping included. They pay our bills with just a casual wave of the phone towards a magic reader … and these are just a tiny number of applications that give a smartphone hold over our daily lives.
Moi prefers to read books on a Kindle thingy and often relaxes by having a book read to her by something called Audible. Both these devices, I am told, know where you have got to in the book, how long you spend reading and on what day you prefer to read. This may sound innocent or even a useful function but it’s all turning into Big Brother and, in my humble opinion, is not to be trusted.
Unfortunately, the powers that be are forcing us all to be increasingly dependent on the phone. It’s now much more difficult to buy a traditional ticket for a show or kickerball match; it has to be downloaded onto a smartphone before entering the stadium. Cash is being phased out in favour of the phone because it is cheaper for the banks to administer and of course they know where our money is coming from or more likely, as in my case, going to.
Are smartphones a threat to future generations?
It may appear that I have developed a conspiracy theory, but I have a genuine distrust of any item with this much power. How many times do we see people sat at a restaurant dining table looking deeply into their phones and not taking any notice of the person or people they are with? All this does not begin to approach what big tech knows of our lifestyle, where we go and who we see.
I personally don’t have any secrets in that regard. As my ramblings may suggest, I am a relatively open book, but unless your name is Bond, James Bond, then no single body should have this sort of knowledge, particularly relatively unregulated American or Chinese big tech industries. Give me a world with no phones any day.
During my conversation with the Colonel, she pointed out (if I understood it correctly) that many medical and psychological issues that are developing in younger people are apparently caused by the dependency on the phone, and how the young are losing, or not developing the skill of a normal and healthy way of communication.
Bullying is also all too easy on a phone, where face-to-face encounters might work out very differently. How do we recognise by using a phone – no matter how smart it is – the subtle nuances of the tightening of the lips or narrowing of the eyes, or the simple body language of folding the arms during a conversation?
How times have changed
If we had an argument with someone when I was a youngan, it was resolved there and then; others would rarely gang up and the only time they would get involved would be to gather round in the hope of a fight developing. Any fights I had with my mates were quick and relatively harmless and the day after we were mates again, possibly a deeper friendship would develop because of the fight. How can that happen on a phone?
In my experience, when lads became big enough to hurt each other and the fists became a weapon of choice then self-preservation kicked in and a fight became a rarity. In the dance hall or street fights that I witnessed I never saw another type of weapon used in anger. There was one local Gowca village idiot who brought a sword tucked down his trousers to a dance. But it was all bravado and it luckily never came out of his trousers. I hope for the sake of the future gene pool that everything stayed safely tucked in his trousers forever.
All this sounds like I have often been involved in a good scrap to some degree, but this is far from the case. I haven’t been in a scrap for years, certainly not since I had my hips done. To put the record straight I was more of a lover than a scrapper and I wasn’t good at that either. But how can anyone have this much fun and experience, and know who to avoid, on a smartphone?
