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But I'm going through my husband's family stuff going back like 4, 5 generations. I'm finding photos, letters, typed up stories, and people's cherished belongings and just...stuff that tells me WHO these people were. And I love these links to people who are no longer with us. I am fascinated by their stories. I sat down with my son when he was here visiting and we went through a photo album together. I realized that the pictures of my kids in that album abruptly stop at a certain point in their childhood, and I realized...that's when I got my first phone that took pictures, and started using that instead of a camera. I still have a lot of the digital photos, since I redundantly saved them across every device and drive and social media account I've had over the years... But we aren't likely to just sit down and go through them. And if I don't print them off and archive them in an album, I'm pretty sure that once I'm gone (if not sooner) they will pretty much vanish.
Some anthropologists speculate that we are currently living in a time period that will become another "dark ages", where very little information about the lives of regular people will survive.
I lost 5 years of digital photos of my kids when a computer hard drive and my portable backup drive both failed. I still have the drives on the hope I can afford to restore the data some day (the pictures are still on the drive, but I currently can't access them).
Information stored "in the cloud" is likewise ephemeral. "The Cloud" is just another way of saying "someone else's computer". The people who own that computer can shut it off, just like what happened with MySpace. You may think Facebook is forever. But everyone said the same thing about Twitter until everyone's favorite super-villain bought it and starting trying to drive it into the ground.
And if you're the type to worry about things you can't control, don't ever look into things like what would happen to electronic data storage if one of the world's nuclear-powered dictators decides to go out with a literal bang (EMP burst), or even a massive solar flare.
On a more personal (and less end-of-worldly) level, I'm looking at upgrading my stove. I want a gas range with an electric double oven. It is literally not possible to buy one that doesn't require wifi access and a smart phone. Ridiculous. I just want an appliance to cook food, not automatically post to Facebook that I burned the gumbo.
Some anthropologists speculate that we are currently living in a time period that will become another "dark ages", where very little information about the lives of regular people will survive.
I lost 5 years of digital photos of my kids when a computer hard drive and my portable backup drive both failed. I still have the drives on the hope I can afford to restore the data some day (the pictures are still on the drive, but I currently can't access them).
Information stored "in the cloud" is likewise ephemeral. "The Cloud" is just another way of saying "someone else's computer". The people who own that computer can shut it off, just like what happened with MySpace. You may think Facebook is forever. But everyone said the same thing about Twitter until everyone's favorite super-villain bought it and starting trying to drive it into the ground.
And if you're the type to worry about things you can't control, don't ever look into things like what would happen to electronic data storage if one of the world's nuclear-powered dictators decides to go out with a literal bang (EMP burst), or even a massive solar flare.
On a more personal (and less end-of-worldly) level, I'm looking at upgrading my stove. I want a gas range with an electric double oven. It is literally not possible to buy one that doesn't require wifi access and a smart phone. Ridiculous. I just want an appliance to cook food, not automatically post to Facebook that I burned the gumbo.
For real? Sheesh. It's been a long time since I had to buy an appliance. I hope that I'm not forced to buy "smart" ones at some point, but I wouldn't be surprised. Ugh.
I recently got an Echo device. I was opposed to such things for a while, but felt it would help us with our task of caregiving for an elderly relative. He refuses to wear his LifeAlert button (that he freaking pays for) so my first notion was that he could yell out into the room for help and help would come. Yeah, well, that is a subscription service, but alright fine. Worth it. So anyways, here we are. With the Bezos-bot in the house. And I can't for the life of me figure out what value it adds to my life.
It came with a free smart light bulb. I installed that and was experimenting with it, telling it to make the light a warmer tone and whatnot. Whee, cool. Then the light started blinking on and off and randomly changing colors and I could. not. make. it. stop. Had to switch it back to a normal "stupid" lightbulb.
My 88 year old father in law does not need a damn disco light in his living room.
Some of this stuff though...I mean, I do like the smart features in my car. The streaming music and maps and hands free calling and all that jazz, it's been pretty useful and neat to have around. It's also got smart cruise control and smart bright headlights and boy is that cool on a road trip!
But yeah so far I haven't really found a lot of utility to the Echo. I can tell it to play music! Ehm, ok but I could tell my phone to do that. I can get it to tell me jokes! I've got a husband, like, right there. It can keep a shopping list or give me reminders or tell me what day it is, or keep track of scheduled appointments! There's this thing called paper, and a really nifty gadget we old timers referred to as a pen, and a dozen charities have mailed calendars to Dad, they have cool animal and nature photos on them...or if I needed to do this electronically I'd use my phone since I carry it around.
I just wish these smart whatsits had to pass a certain bar for actual usefulness before they started being marketed as necessary.
For real? Sheesh. It's been a long time since I had to buy an appliance. I hope that I'm not forced to buy "smart" ones at some point, but I wouldn't be surprised. Ugh.
I recently got an Echo device. I was opposed to such things for a while, but felt it would help us with our task of caregiving for an elderly relative. He refuses to wear his LifeAlert button (that he freaking pays for) so my first notion was that he could yell out into the room for help and help would come. Yeah, well, that is a subscription service, but alright fine. Worth it. So anyways, here we are. With the Bezos-bot in the house. And I can't for the life of me figure out what value it adds to my life.
It came with a free smart light bulb. I installed that and was experimenting with it, telling it to make the light a warmer tone and whatnot. Whee, cool. Then the light started blinking on and off and randomly changing colors and I could. not. make. it. stop. Had to switch it back to a normal "stupid" lightbulb.
My 88 year old father in law does not need a damn disco light in his living room.
Some of this stuff though...I mean, I do like the smart features in my car. The streaming music and maps and hands free calling and all that jazz, it's been pretty useful and neat to have around. It's also got smart cruise control and smart bright headlights and boy is that cool on a road trip!
But yeah so far I haven't really found a lot of utility to the Echo. I can tell it to play music! Ehm, ok but I could tell my phone to do that. I can get it to tell me jokes! I've got a husband, like, right there. It can keep a shopping list or give me reminders or tell me what day it is, or keep track of scheduled appointments! There's this thing called paper, and a really nifty gadget we old timers referred to as a pen, and a dozen charities have mailed calendars to Dad, they have cool animal and nature photos on them...or if I needed to do this electronically I'd use my phone since I carry it around.
I just wish these smart whatsits had to pass a certain bar for actual usefulness before they started being marketed as necessary.
There is a very good reason the Amazon Echo / Alexa did not impress you. The real purpose of Alexa was to acclimate people to shopping by voice command and knock out competitors from the current online shopping paradigm of using websites. Of course this removes the ability of consumers to comparison shop across vendors or even across product offerings within one vendor. Those weaknesses doomed shopping by voice command to failure. How are brand differences and different product models accounted for if shopping by voice command?
Alexa, order paper towels. Which ones? What size package? Describing an order verbally down to the last detail could become more tedious than picking an option from a website.
The rest of the features of Amazon Alexa are fairly frivolous.
That plan never really materialized, though. It's not like Alexa plays ad breaks after you use it, so the hope was that people would buy things on Amazon via their voice. Not many people want to trust an AI with spending their money or buying an item without seeing a picture or reading reviews. The report says that by year four of the Alexa experiment, "Alexa was getting a billion interactions a week, but most of those conversations were trivial commands to play music or ask about the weather." Those questions aren't monetizable."
I think there are a couple of other threads specific to Amazon Alexa on C-D elsewehere.
Last edited by AtkinsonDan; 01-21-2023 at 09:30 AM..
For real? Sheesh. It's been a long time since I had to buy an appliance. I hope that I'm not forced to buy "smart" ones at some point, but I wouldn't be surprised. Ugh.
You can buy a stove that isn't "smart", but I want nice one with specific features. There are very few models with all the features I want, and all are "smart".
Specifically I want a gas range (see note 1) and an electric double oven, all in a standard-size form factor. If you ever use a stove with a second oven in place of the warming or storage drawer, it's a game changer. Three manufacturers make them (with a few sub-models each), but all are "smart", and require an app to use some of the features. Literally you are not be able to use some features by pushing a button on the stove; you have to use your phone. Ok, I just won't use those features... nope, they straight won't work at all without wifi. I'm looking at ways to change what I want to eliminate the "smart" part, but I'm not having any luck.
Note 1: No, the current US administration is not trying to "ban" gas ranges. One random bureaucrat hinted at it, but he doesn't have that authority and it'll never happen. They're correct about the harmful nature of cooking with gas, though, plus the whole global warming thing. Anyone who cooks with gas indoors without an active vent to the outside or with an old leaky stove is literally risking their life. I want one because electricity isn't 100% reliable in my rural area, and it will have a vent hood that exhausts to outside.
I just wish these smart whatsits had to pass a certain bar for actual usefulness before they started being marketed as necessary.
None of it is necessary. It's just technological keeping up with the Jonses, while making the tech companies filthy rich as they surveil your every move and thought.
My smart phone is a miracle to me. Texting, calling, messaging, taking photos, banking, games, reading the news all in one slab of plastic that fits in my pocket.
Tap cards are also great on transit. No more making sure you have change, although I do remember the days when drivers gave you back change. When it became exact change, it got to be a bother. Cards are so much better.
Some technology I don't like. Self-checkout is one.
Of course the Internet is something I don't think we could give up and go back. Just like ATM's. I remember having to run to the bank before 3pm on Fridays before they closed for the weekend.
My grandmother was one to adapted to technology with ease. Born in the early 1900's and died in the first decade of the 21st century. I said to her once that she must be amazed at all the changes. Her response was not really. She was here for all the changes, most happened gradually. She did say one thing that made me laugh. When she was little, when a plane flew over they would all look up in amazement. This would be around 1918 or so. She said, she never thought that she would ever get to fly in one, let alone, sipping back cocktails in one!
I had a much older friend who was taken with his smartphone and newer technology, which I didn't see the point of. He explained that he "didn't want to fall behind".
He's dead now, and I feel sorry that he wasted so much time in his last years trying to keep current with technological inanities that didn't add anything to his quality of life, and probably only subtracted from it.
Its Sunday morning and you race out to get the newspaper to look in the classifieds. You find something you are interested in and impatiently wait until your wife gets off the phone so that you can actually call and speak to someone hoping you were one of the first to respond to the add (luckily the only competition was the local community). They give you their address without hesitation and give you an idea of where they lived so you could find it easier. You hop in your car and rummage through the bag of tapes on your passenger seat and find the perfect one. Driving around you realize you cannot find the house so you stop at a store, pay for a cup of coffee and that new magazine that you had been waiting for with cash, you then use the pay phone to call and get better directions from where you are. As you drive, you stop at a beautiful location and think it would make a nice picture, so you reach into the backseat, grab your camera and snap a couple of photos realizing there are still another 20 pictures on the roll before you can get it developed. Not taking many pictures, its always exciting to get the roll developed to see what was on it. You finally get to the house and realize it wasnt what you were looking for so you turn around and go home. When you get home you see your kids playing outside and your wife is doing some gardening. You stop at the mailbox and grab the mail to find a letter from your aunt who likes to write instead of call and you put it aside to read later that day. When you go in the house to hang your keys up, there is a message on the answering machine from an old friend who leaves his number so you can call and catch up. I miss the 80's.
Technology is good to a point and then it just becomes excessive in my opinion and for me 2005ish was about my breaking point. I feel most technology since then has been unnecessary, so in my opinion, smart technology has made life worse.
Its Sunday morning and you race out to get the newspaper to look in the classifieds. You find something you are interested in and impatiently wait until your wife gets off the phone so that you can actually call and speak to someone hoping you were one of the first to respond to the add (luckily the only competition was the local community). They give you their address without hesitation and give you an idea of where they lived so you could find it easier. You hop in your car and rummage through the bag of tapes on your passenger seat and find the perfect one. Driving around you realize you cannot find the house so you stop at a store, pay for a cup of coffee and that new magazine that you had been waiting for with cash, you then use the pay phone to call and get better directions from where you are. As you drive, you stop at a beautiful location and think it would make a nice picture, so you reach into the backseat, grab your camera and snap a couple of photos realizing there are still another 20 pictures on the roll before you can get it developed. Not taking many pictures, its always exciting to get the roll developed to see what was on it. You finally get to the house and realize it wasnt what you were looking for so you turn around and go home. When you get home you see your kids playing outside and your wife is doing some gardening. You stop at the mailbox and grab the mail to find a letter from your aunt who likes to write instead of call and you put it aside to read later that day. When you go in the house to hang your keys up, there is a message on the answering machine from an old friend who leaves his number so you can call and catch up. I miss the 80's.
Technology is good to a point and then it just becomes excessive in my opinion and for me 2005ish was about my breaking point. I feel most technology since then has been unnecessary, so in my opinion, smart technology has made life worse.
It's all fun and games until someone breaks into your car and steals the tapes AND the camera.
I do however miss letters and phone calls. There is no reason why we can't do that anymore, and it makes me sad that a lot of younger people just really seem not to want to. I mean, OK, writing letters was always a little bit of a chore at times, but phone calls? I love a good long phone call. You can't actually hear someone laugh at a joke in a text message. Why do so many people hate to talk on the phone these days?
I mean, for crying out loud back when I was young and before cell phones, you had to pay a fortune for a long distance call! Now it's all "unlimited" and free, so what on earth is anybody's excuse???
The other thing about letters though, is involved with what I mentioned before about what we create and leave behind for future generations. I'm still in process of going through my husband's "family stuff" that is coming from his elderly Dad's place and storage and all. And several of his deceased relatives who were really interesting and vibrant characters, wrote a TON of correspondence. It's been so fascinating to read their letters and writings! Absolutely riveting at times! And we have a whole box of love letters that his father wrote to his Mom when he was wooing her and through the first couple of years they were together, when he was in the military and they were often forced to be separated. I said to Dad just the other night that I truly wish I'd been able to meet his wife/my husband's mother (she passed before I'd met my husband.) And he sighed and said, "...the love of my life..." I mean, good lord what do we have now, heart emojis? I can't help but feel that to some kind of an extent, the way that we use technology to engage with one another degrades the human experience. Even though, as I said, I do actually like my smart phone and my laptop and social media and the ability to text and whatnot.
I just don't want the old ways to completely vanish, I guess.
Texting is for sending a message like email not to "talk" about stuff.
you fire a message off into the ether and you can be sure it’s been seen almost immediately, no matter where the person is. Then you have to try to go about your life while simultaneously obsessing about why it’s taking them so long to reply.
It made a huge mess of dating.
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