All too much monkey business, as Chuck Berry told us clearly many years ago.
All too much monkey business, as Chuck Berry told us clearly many years ago.
I had to google to see if Chuck Berry was still alive. Seems he is.
Went to dinner at Greenery Cafe the other day. Saw a party of 10 at another large table. After they were done eating all 10 of them were playing with their phones and not a single person was speaking to another at the table. So ridiculous, I took a picture of them and they all happily smiled not realizing how stupid they all looked to me.
This morning, there was a mother and her 14 y/o son at the basketball court in our residential quarter. They were playing badmington together. However, her son had a racket in one hand and phone in the other. What a fool (both of them).
After playing badmington, they started jogging around the perimeter of the court. Again, the kid running and looking at phone at the same time. Finally, the mother started wrestling the phone out of the kids hand at which time I applauded her.
Can't even count the times I have seen parents give their kids a phone to play with so they will not be bothered. As young as 6 months old, as though it was a toy or a rattle or pacifier.
When I see women in the bus who nearly falls down because they can not hold on while the bus is braking because they have a bag in one hand and a phone in the other - Soooo stupid. Saw a woman actually fall down just the other day - Haha! Shame did not break her neck.
What does all this have to do with wechat - just another tool for the fools!
Every person now carries the largest library in the world in their pocket or bag but 95% of them just use it for entertainment purposes rather than actually learning something. The more technologu they have the more ignorant they become. Makes them easier to control - Haha! Stupid slaves.
Generation divide, young wins. deja vu.
Campo's impressionist description of the current electronic environment is pretty close to my own these days.
However, all this is Progress, so we know it must be good.
It all goes towards Jack Ma's next billion.
I think we do lose, society gains convenience but loses freedom. If you look at general trends in technology, the free time we get from convenience is soon put to use on the treadmill of work. Boss emails, Wechats at all hours. People struggle to keep the job. Boss is also under pressure for the team to perform.
Question: Things are tight, who do I let go? The guy with the work life balance, or the guy who responds to emails/Wechats at 10pm, on weekends and holidays?
But now we are off topic.
Jack Ma is associated with Alibaba.
@ Tiger, you got it right: "If you look at general trends in technology, the free time we get from convenience is soon put to use on the treadmill of work."
Been going on since the beginning of modern manufacture, if not before - one has to run faster & faster just to stand still. Somebody somewhere believes we are benefiting from this, and maybe they are.
The attitude to new technology by some is no different to the disappointment when the newspaper came onto the market in the 18th century with comments such as 'dispersed individuals, isolated in sullen silence'. Going further back the Ancient Greeks were sad that oral tradition was being replaced by written text. Later on, for some, book ownership was a disaster as is the internet for those who do not wish access of information to the masses.
With new electronic media we are just rewired into how we take things in and according to professor Gary Small (UCLA) exposure to modern media strengthens new neural pathways while weakening older ones (5 hours of internet use is enough to awaken previously dormant parts of the brain's pre-fontal cortex).
So, although some may find Wechat useless, strange or even a threat, it's only because it's new and unfamiliar to what their brains have been used to (programmed to) for a long period of time.
Sometimes, we just have to 'fit in' and use what everyone else is using if we don't want to appear (or 'be' according to some) out of touch.
Information overload on wechat is a problem as it is with the internet but can be controlled - by the user