I surrender to the Borg....

I can recall a long time ago, looking through magazines and newspapers, seeing something curious in ads, and even editorials. Businesses were starting to put odd annotations about "emailing" them and visiting their site at _____.com. I had heard of the internet, of course, in the computer related magazines I was reading at the time. But it seemed like some sort of arcane nerd network where the geeks could hang out by typing messages on a keyboard and watching received messages scroll across the screen through their phone line modems. Now, suddenly, this was becoming mainstream.

I started thinking that perhaps there was something to this, and that perhaps I needed to jump into this myself. It sort of looked like this internet stuff was here to stay. This was back in the mid '90s, and I thought perhaps my SerpenCo business might be worthwhile taking advantage of this new medium obviously gaining steam. I could see the potential of posting pics "online" along with a price list, instead of spending a fortune every year mailing out lists and some accompanying photos. Heck, this could actually be a GOOD thing.

So we fast forward to now. Over the last few years, I have been highly resistant of the "smart" phone generation, because quite honestly, I just didn't see the need for it. Obviously I had been looking at it only from the "phone" aspect, rather than the "smart" aspect. I really don't want to get phone calls when I am anywhere else but in my home. So spending the kind of money these things were demanding for the opportunity to be bothered by a phone call while I am out driving, out shopping, eating dinner out, or even walking the beach, just didn't make any sense to me. Heck, I can remember a time when if someone called you on the phone and asked you "where are you", that would be grounds to throw a straight jacket on them and haul them away. I also remember a time when someone would be walking down the street apparently talking to themselves, that you knew to just give them a wide berth and try not to make eye contact with them. But things have changed.

And to be perfectly honest, from the phone calls I have gotten from people using this cell phone technology, with the conversation breaking up all of the time with only every other word being completely audible, and sometimes making what the other party was saying completely indecipherable, I just couldn't see the sense to it. Seemed like a lot of money to pay for half baked technology. Heck, I still see people who have to walk outside in order to use their phones. Rain or shine. But this technology HAS to have improved, right? RIGHT??

So anyway here comes this deja vu slowly creeping up on me. I start seeing these odd square boxes in magazines and newspapers, saying something like "For more information"..... next to the boxes. Hmmm.... They don't even say what you are supposed to DO with those boxes, like everyone already knows. So yeah, that tingling sensation has started building up on the back of my neck. I can feel the hair growing all over my body as I become a caveman suddenly thrust into the future.

But still I had been resistant, although I could feel the cracks in the armor of my excuses. So the breaking point came back in June, when Connie and I were on Sanibel Island and we took our bikes and rode down to the "Ding" Darling National Wildlife Refuge. Used to be they would have various signs along the way, explaining the wildlife, or history, or some other aspect of the natural features along the way. Not any more. Know what they have now?



Yeah, that is it. No text for the "smart phone challenged" cavemen. You either have a smart phone to scan that box, or you are just plain out of luck if you want to know what the sign is trying to tell you. A caveman would have felt no less out of his element looking at those signs. They meant absolutely nothing to me. If they had said, "walk forward 4 feet, start digging, and there is a million dollars in the ground", I would have passed it by because I could not have read that message. I will tell you, that was a real smack in the head for me.

So at first I was irritated. How DARE them to treat me like a caveman! So I stewed in silence on that while continuing to ride my bicycle on down the road, thinking hard about what this meant. Then I started feeling worried. Suppose this is the future staring at me. Suppose it is going to become NECESSARY to have a smart phone eventually. Shades of the mark of the devil! I have already had several instances of online verification requiring receiving a text message that I could not comply with. So is this where this is all headed? Eventually you will not be able to accomplish simple basic tasks without having a smart phone in order to do it. Heck, I don't know how many household devices now have apps that will run on a smart phone. A while back I was really interested in getting one of those radio controlled drones to take aerial video, but most of them required a smart phone or tablet as the visual interface. So I lost interest and put that idea WAY back on the back burner. But how long before I won't be able to drive a new car because it too will need to interface with a smart phone? Or I find that I cannot even use the microwave oven without one? Or I come to a door one day that requires the use of a cell phone to provide ID so I can gain entry? Sheesh.....

OK, OK, yeah I know most of you already have your smart phones and probably cannot understand why I don't too, and this is all pretty humorous to you. I'm an old guy, so ease up on me. I am coming around. I finally see no choice but to surrender to the tide. I am going to finally get one of these new fangled devices, because it appears that sooner rather than later, I will have no choice. Of course, I will probably stencil "666" on the back of it, and be damned for all eternity, but what the heck. It's the price I am going to have to pay to come out of the cave, I guess.

But I am asking of you all that if you see me sitting at dinner with Connie, or walking through a mall, or driving, with my nose stuck to my cell phone, oblivious to the outside world, please just SHOOT me. Well, shoot the phone first, please, and if I look like my soul has been taken from me with the death of my cell phone, THEN shoot me. I have seen these things apparently taking over people's lives. Heck, I have been reading up on smart phones in articles on the net, and I actually read one where the author claimed that buying a smart phone is going to be the most important decision you can make in your life. I kid you not. And I seriously hope no one really believes that. Because if it were true, we are in some SERIOUS trouble as a society.

I suppose it's just a matter of time before these things are going to be required to be implanted into our brains and make cyborgs out of us. Of course, I also suppose that a majority of the people thoroughly hooked on their cell phones would welcome the convenience of something like that and fight to get first in line to have that done. It probably wouldn't even have to be made mandatory for most folks.

Oh well... Welcome to the Borg, Caveman.

Well said, and there are a lot of us, of a "certain age", who feel the same. I resisted becoming one of "them" for a very long time. Got my first Smartphone a couple years ago.

Why the appeal? For me, being introverted, and kind of a loner, I love having a mini-computer I can take with me. I hate talking on the phone, and have, ever since they plugged into the wall, and had a rotary dial.

I rarely use my phone as a phone, but I pay all my bills electronically, and buy most everything online now. This little hand-held computer is perfect for people like me. I'm a knowledge junkie, and when I can't sleep, I can Google anything. I love the ability to research anything, any time, anywhere!

So for me, this isn't a phone. I rarely talk on it, and don't understand the need to yak into it constantly, like you see so many people do. But, to each his own. It's just the perfect way for me to communicate in writing (my preferred method), and to look up whatever I want to read about, whenever I want to.

Kathy

LOL I joined the club two days ago after my old flip phone - whose sole function was to call for a tow truck when my car died - finally went tango-uniform after 15+ years of reliable service. I wasn't going to bother but my hubby got it for me as an early birthday present.

As a young kid, I noticed that some adults had car phones. The people with car phones were all emergency room surgeons who needed to be reachable on an emergency basis even if they weren't either home, or in their office. I wondered if I would ever have an important enough job to need a car phone. Later, I noticed that some adults had huge, brick like cell phones. These people were important business people who needed to be consulted about important decisions at any time. When my dad got one, I took this as a sign that his employer found him important. My mom certainly didn't have one, she was a college professor. Over time my dad's cell phone got smaller, less ugly and less cumbersome. People with less important jobs now had them. My mom still didn't.

When I was 16-17, the wealthiest people I was aware of started to give cell phones to kids my age. My friends wished their parents were rich enough for them to a have a cell phone. I didn't see them as desirable, because I was a largely a loner who only wanted to talk to my friends when I felt like it, and I knew that my parents would try to use it as an electronic leash. As time passed, phones became cheap enough for my parents to afford one for me (my 13 year old sister totally didn't get one). I resisted for as long as I could, and was comfortable being the only kid I knew who didn't have a cell phone, and wasn't the poorest person in the room. That person, if they thought it would work, would use the best materials they could afford to create something that really looked like a cell phone, and they would keep it in their pocket and occasionally take it out and look at it so that other people thought they had a phone. But eventually, I caved and accepted the cell phone and the parental control it entailed. But I began to enjoy using it for things I wanted to do. The best thing I thought of to do with it, as a person who did not wish to speak to anyone, was to have a mailbox greeting that merely confirmed the number you had dialed. Then I went to the office of the high school, and told them that my parents phone number had changed, in case the school needed to reach them in an emergency. I gave them my cell phone number. I then proceeded to skip as much class as I felt like, with my school leaving helpless messages for my parents about how much class I'd missed, on my cell phone. In the end, I skipped so much class and my parents never seemed to care, that a social worker was assigned to me. I was concerned that she might make me go to class. But all she really wanted to do was make sure that my parents at least cared enough about me to give me food and let me sleep indoors. At the end of the school year, I had gone to exactly as many classes as I needed to graduate, my GPA had tanked, and I didn't care, because I had gotten in on early decision to the college I most wanted to go to. I guess cell phones can be good.

I have not surrendered yet. Still have my LG flip phone with full QWERTY keyboard. I think I've had this phone for about 9 years. Yes, I get laughed at when I pull it out to type a full-worded text, but it still works and I refuse to assimilate.

Well, I just got back from the local Best Buy store, and found that Verizon was offering a real deal on the Samsung Galaxy S8+. $300 off of the regular price. I had been reading up on the front runners for IOS (Apple) and Android phones and the new Galaxy phone has gotten glowing reviews.

The guys there couldn't believe the old flip phone we had, and were too young to have ever seen the old plan we had with Verizon.

So I have to charge up the phone fully so I can take a look at options and play with it a bit.

And I learned something (partially) new too. This cell phone (and I assume others) can be charged up wirelessly just by laying it on a sort of paddle. No direct contacts, or plug ins. I have to look this up to see how that works. Shades of Nikola Tesla!

Well, I have mixed feelings about this smart phone stuff. One one hand, the Borg seem to be OK to rub elbows with. Kind of handy having a pocket programmable computer. Still only scratching the surface, but the idea of being able to speak into a handheld device and get answers to just about anything is right intriguing. Of course, I haven't tested it much yet to see what sort of limits there are. Could it REALLY tell me what the torque specs are on the starter bolts for a 2002 Corvette engine while I am in the garage in a NEED TO KNOW RIGHT NOW sort of situation?

Seem to be a LOT of freebie apps available, but it seems the strings attached mean being slammed with ads. Of course, I guess anything run by Google would have to be that way. Probably after I get my feet wet learning on the freebie apps, I might just try to replace what I can with paid apps. Of course, I don't know how the pricing structure works. Prices seem cheap enough, but is that a one time purchase, or are they what I would have to pay each month? I've stopped buying PC software from vendors who just want to lease you their software products instead of you BUYING them outright.

One thing I do know.... No way in hell I would want to do much of anything on the internet on something like this. I logged into FaunaClassifieds and just tried viewing some classified ads, and that was actually painful to do. Expanding and shrinking the screen constantly, scrolling just to read the text or view a picture CONSTANTLY is WAY too much work. I'll stick with my 4K 28 inch screen and full sized keyboard on my desktop computer, thank you very much. If I HAD to do much of the stuff I do on a daily basis on my sites only using a smart phone, I would be out of and over this stuff in a hurry. Heck, I have small hands and fingers, and trying to tap out even the most basic stuff to post a message is cruel and unusual punishment. I found a stylus I had laying around and find it much easier to "type" that way. Why anyone would put themselves through that day in and day out is beyond me. It just makes the internet actually painful to use.

I do like being able to see weather radar on the fly, and the GPS topo maps look like they could be useful when on trips. Then there is a tool package I installed that has some pretty nifty stuff. The ability to make the smart phone effectively into a magnifying glass is neat. One of the tools is a metal detector, so I'm curious to see how that one works. Also a heart rate monitor, compass, etc.. And yeah, it is kind of cool to be able to take photos and 4K video on the fly with this phone. But I really can't see it taking the place of my photo and video gear for serious shooting. This would be for times when I DON'T have camera gear with me, and something photo worthy just happens to come along. This would be WAY better than nothing in a situation like that.

But yeah, when I take trips, I am STILL going to be taking my laptop with me. This smart phone makes a pretty interesting tool for a lot of things, but I just cannot see it ever taking the place of my main desktop and laptop computers. Even though the computing power should be sufficient, the user interface itself is severely lacking.

So, I guess I am not fully assimilated into the Borg culture yet. This could go one of two ways, I guess. (1) I become absorbed in this technology as I find more and more practical things to use it for, or (2) The newness of a new fangled device enthralls me for a little while, but eventually the novelty will wear off, and it becomes "just a phone with other benefits" to me. Even as a phone, I sure as heck don't want anyone calling me unless I am at home without a darn good reason.

Oh yeah, Connie wants her own phone. So I guess we will be buying another one pretty shortly. Normally she just takes the cell phone we had with her when she makes trips when we are not together. But she worries about me being without one when I am here alone and driving on the roads anywhere. I sincerely doubt she will ever get much involved with a smart phone, however. She just doesn't care much for anything of a technical nature.

Originally Posted by WebSlave

Seem to be a LOT of freebie apps available, but it seems the strings attached mean being slammed with ads.

If you eventually decide to fully assimilate, and decide you're the tinkering kind, there is a way to get rid of ads via rooting the phone and installing a legitimate ad-blocking program. Right now, it looks like your device is so new that the phone fanatics who develop the exploits which make rooting possible haven't had time to find a working method. I'm never happy with a phone unless I can get root access on it. The wirelesss QI charging feature does also look pretty interesting. It's available for my Galaxy S7, but I haven't gotten around to actually buying the charging pad yet.

Here's a useful forum for all things related to your specific phone model, in case you get really curious about more advanced topics: https://forum.xda-developers.com/verizon-galaxy-s8+

I've been on Team Smartphone since the days of the AT&T Tilt, a Windows Mobile phone from somewhere around 2007. After that, I was on the waiting list for the very first Android phone made available to the public, the T-Mobile LG G1. Aside from a short stint with with an iPhone 3GS, I've been an Android guy ever since. I've just found them too damned useful to ever consider going back to an old dumbphone again.

Well, at this point I'm not expecting to want to tinker in the innards of the phone. Heck, I don't even normally overclock anything on my PCs. But thanks for the link. Seems to me I have been to that site a few times as I was tracking down reviews and other sundry info about smart phones in general when I was trying to decide which one I wanted to get.

So we went back to Best Buy and they were still running that sale on the Samsung Galaxy S8 and S8+ so we got another one for her. Good lord, now I have yet another phone number to try to remember. After YEARS of having our original flip cell phone, I finally remembered that number. That's because we never really used it, but still, even with casual exposure, you would think that it wouldn't have taken me so long to remember that phone number.

So last night I was playing around with ringtones. I figured I would just download them to my desktop and then transfer them to my phone, and sure enough, that worked OK. I finally just settled on the old fashion bell type phone like we had in our house when I was a kid. I guess I've heard far too many people with ringtones that wanted me to toss a grenade at them, so I wasn't interested in trying to be fancy. Connie says she wants music for hers, so we'll see what she picks out. Might have to keep a grenade handy....

Well, Connie having her own phone now makes it kind of tough, because I usually have to help her figure out technical stuff, and I'm a newbie with this stuff too, and floundering to come up with answers when she asks. I still haven't figured out how to rearrange the icons on the screen to move the ones I will actually ever use to the front, and the other ones to the back. Or heck, perhaps I could just create folders to put the really arcane icons out of sight completely? I already deleted the games that are preloaded on the phone, as I can't see me ever playing games. After playing games on my desktop, I can't see where playing games on a little phone is going to have much attraction for me.

I had downloaded some ringtones and figured out how to get them from my PC to the phones, and yesterday evening had Connie pick out something she would like. She found one that was OK, but she really wanted something better. I had to pry out of her what she had in mind, and she said she really likes the into to the song "Key Largo". So I spent some time last night creating a custom ringtone for her from that song. Would have gone a LOT quicker if the utilities I had would have been able to download the music file from YouTube. I finally did find one video I could download, but all the rest of them just would not work. Extracting the intro and editing it a bit was a snap after I got the raw file.

Oh, I changed the ringtone I picked when I heard one that just cracked me up when I first heard it. It starts with the oldtime bell ringer, and then some Pakistani sounding guy starts talking about "pick up the phone, please". It will probably get old after a while, but for now it's worth a laugh when I hear it. I hope no one tosses a grenade at me.

So looks like today Connie is going to be calling members of her family to give them her new phone number and also have their phone numbers stored on her new phone. I showed her how to edit them as contacts to make them easier to find. I know she is going to be hoping that someone calls her so she can hear her ringtone.

I'm waiting for a case to come in that I ordered. We bought a sort of wallet style case for mine when I bought it, but Connie really likes that one, so I gave it to her. I'm thinking I want one with a belt clip so it will be easy to carry around when we are hiking in the woods, or riding the trails on our bikes. Not that I am expecting, or wanting, any phone calls, but accidents can happen.... I will tell you what, these things without a case are as slippery as gravy on a doorknob. No wonder people drop and break them. I also put screen protectors on the front of both phones. I'll be honest, seeing fingerprints, smudges and streaks on the shiny surfaces of the phones really drives both of us nuts.

Oh, I found a nifty little app that supposedly lets you GPS track another phone via the phone number. Connie is planning on visiting family soon, so I thought it kind of cool to be able to track her progress as she drives up north. I passed this by her first, of course. We figure the government already can use these things to track everyone anyway, so this just allows us to tap into that capability. Of course, our limited app requires that the same app be on each phone we would want to track, but I'm sure the government doesn't have any such limitation.

So when do I get that cool metallic exoskeleton on my body of the Borg?