MaggieMae
Reality bits
- Apr 3, 2009
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Why do we need all this technology? Does it really bring any of us closer as a people or it is just a means of "communicating" while avoiding any real face to face or other meaningful communication? Does it effectively "isolate" us from other human contact?
Need? Well some of it can be handy sometimes, but only sometimes.
We mostly "need" it because of sales and marketing.
Although I wholeheartedly agree with that (and psikeyhackr's analysis), I do have a true story that happened on Monday (the holiday) and forced me to at least buy more minutes for my Tracfone.
My sister got sucked into one of those "specials" that offered a discount for a thousand minutes (although she too still uses her landline 99.99% of the time). So here she's stuck with all these minutes that she needs to use by the end of the month or they disappear. She offered to lend me her cell phone so that I could call my son in Texas and talk as long as I wanted, plus I have a close friend having some problems that would probably be a very long toll-call.
Well my sister decided to get her car washed yesterday, and half-way through the wash & suds cycle, the whole mechanism just came to a complete stop. It's all automated, and NO ONE was around to reset the thing, or whatever it is they would normally do in such situations (it was a holiday, remember). She really thought she was going to have to get out of the car and start yelling as loud as she could to catch the attention of some passerby BECAUSE I HAD HER CELL PHONE and she couldn't call anyone for help, even 911. As it turned out, there must be a failsafe mechanism because as she started to get out of her car (and get sloshed), the big door opened. Whew. There was an emergency phone number posted on the wall, which she did try to call just to let them know the problem but NOBODY ANSWERED! She got, you guessed it, voicemail.