Well, my O2 contract has expired and I am now cut off so if anybody has tried to contact me by phone in the last two weeks, I have been happily unable to answer. Since possession of a mobile phone is universal nowadays, and I know my own mobile number by heart, I shall still indicate that number on forms and such things forever and a day until I am found out and compelled to find a cheap replacement for my iPhone 4S. God grant that this day never comes. What is so awful about wanting to be left in peace? Mobile phones are as much an occasion of sin as social networking sites and just as useless.
Are you, perhaps, worried that I am I turning into a Puritan?
Patricius, for the sheer practicality in situations where safety ought to be assured, get a pay as you go sim card. You may argue that we didn't have such things in recent times, but we had public phone boxes then! After all, if you don't use it, it shan't cost you anything!
ReplyDeleteThat would defeat the whole point of cutting myself off from modern life. Who knows, this blog may disappear soon...
DeleteYou may wish to cut yourself off form modern life, but you should also accept that it is a modern world we live in. I am not -- repeat, not -- saying you ought to buy into the whole social media/electronic media clap-trap, far from it; all I'm saying is that in a world where there's never a phone box when you need one, oughtn't you have convenient means (even if often turned off) of summoning the emergency services if need be?
ReplyDeleteI do hope the blog doesn't disappear soon. You're too hard on yourself, I fear.
I would echo Mark's comment above. A mobile 'phone or a social networking sight in themselves are surely not the problem - it is what we do with them.
ReplyDeleteI have a simple and cheap mobile phone. For me it is just that - a telephone by which I can be contacted when I'm not at home, or in the car so that I can call for breakdown assistance or tell someone that I'm going to be late because of heavy traffic. I have the internet at home for everything else covered by modern communications and sources of information.
ReplyDeleteI to have Luddite feelings and wish we were in the 19th century, but if these things were to go, we would miss them because we have experienced them. I didn't miss computers as a schoolboy or even as a university student, because I had never used one.
As Rubricarius says, it's like a knife, which can be used as a cutting tool or a weapon to kill another human being. It's the old idea of being in the world and not of it, or being a citizen of Romantia whilst living and working in The Pit.
I try to keep the technology to the minimum too, but I am also glad to get away on sailing holidays using technology going back to centuries ago. Even then, a mobile phone and a portable VHF radio come in very handy when one's life might be in danger!