I fear this day may have all ready arrived.

It's been here for a while now!

 

I read a study from Yale on the modern electronic addicts brain. They got 20 teenagers who were college freshman. They took away their phones and computers. Any type of electronics. Then they gave them a simple test. It had basic math questions, vocabulary questions, some spelling questions and they had to list their friends and families phone numbers. All of them failed. They had no idea. They couldn't even remember their parents phone numbers without the use of their cell phones.

Another study showed withdraw symptoms in some people who were without their electronics for a period of 2 days. A couple started to freak out too.

The new "stance" is bent over. Sad really.

 

The worst part, this WILL get worse.

 

Think this may be just a youth thing, something that people outgrow? Or will there be scenes like these in the nursing homes?

In the future people will look like praying mantises.

 

I can't say anything as I got told off by the wife today for spending too much time texting-and I've not been a teenager since 1977!

 

I was watching a bably girl not more than two play with her mothers phone at the table next to us the other night while at dinner. The baby got mad at mommys phone when it didn't do what she wanted and began slamming on the table. Oh how I wished she had broken it, but no luck. Scenes like this make my blood boil. What ever happed to giving baby toys to play with that don't have a touchscreen?

 

I agree fully. I am on track to be the proud 1st time father of a baby boy, and i have told my wife that cell phones, ipads, laptops will be out of the question when it comes to my child during there youth, especially infancy. They will also not get a cell phone when they are 10,11,12,13,14,15. They don't need it. Parents i feel need to put the foot down on this fad of well all the kids have one so here ya go, BS, your the parent tell them hell no. That is all. Have a great day.

 

Yeah, we have a couple of rules in my house.
1. No Phones at the dinner table.
2. When I'm talking to you (kids) put your phone down.

Also every summer we take a 2 week camping trip where there is no cell coverage, no internet, no wifi, ect... The only things we bring that plug in is the coffee maker, lights on our camper and a radio. The kids go into technology withdraw for a couple of days, but after that, its all fun.

 

Same here !

 

Great idea.

 

Well, I take the opposite view. No doubt blacksmiths all raised hell at horseless carriages, but autos succeeded and blacksmiths faded from the scene. I embrace technology, I Facebook and I Twitter. Early on I didn't text because I didn't see the point. But texting ends up being incredibly useful. Especially if you are in meetings and can't take a call. I don't text as fast as my grandchildren and I don't use the texting shorthand, but it's here to stay. Look at it this way, if we didn't have technology, we wouldn't have this great 650 community.

 

When I was in the Army one of our Blackhawks was landed on a tree stump in the Scapegoat Wilderness in Montana. This was way back in 1988, when the Apple II was a hot setup, CD's were just dropping below 15 bucks each, and a cell phone generally came in a bag. Pagers were just coming along. GPS was a top secret program called NAVSTAR, and there were only 4 satellites up to support it.
So, we have this hole the size of a 19 inch TV punched in the bottom of the bird, the floor panels are erupted off the frame, and we are on the side of a mountain. The aircraft cannot lift up off it. We are hot and high, and it's snagged. We cut the floor apart with two crash axes enough to see that we were "barbing" like a fish hook on the shards of metal. We cut away the stump until we figured it would come free. Then we discovered that one of the primary bell frames had been compromised by the damage. Not wanting the thing to twist in half if we got it loose, we decided we needed engineering input from Sikorsky. Another aircraft flew to Missoula, and a crewman took a cab to the local newspaper, and got ahold of the staff photographer ,and had him bring all his fancy gear, since it was getting dark. We took him to the mountain, where he blew through 3 rolls of film. We hauled butt back to town, got them delveloped at he 1-hour photo, and Fed Exed the pictures to Stratford Conn. overnight. The next day, we got word on what to do, and flew into Missoula to the ANG facility, and spent the next 5 days repairing the aircraft. Nowadays, you can snap a pic and send it out with a handheld satellite phone. Boom, you're done. BUT it's abused, in my opinion. I watched a group of 7 cousins last year at my house at Christmas, who had not seen each other all year, sit side by side on the couch, not say a word and pay with thier fucking phones for 5 hours. I wish I had 5 hours in 10 YEARS with some of my cousins. Insane world we live in. No wonder most kids are social train wrecks nowadays, and can't put a working relationship together. Maybe that's it. This group of jackasses won't breed, and they'll die out!

 

My boss fired a guy at work last year for constantly texting. The boss told him, "No use of cell phones while customers were in the store...period". I watched him stand there, clicking away, for quite a while as 3 customers stood in line. I was helping another customer and couldn't get to the counter. He even asked them to, "... wait a minute". He was verbally warned, then a written warning, but still did it. He even said it was his right according to the labor laws. ??? Then his mom came in and yelled at the boss for firing him. Her son said he was fired for no reason, but was not true. This dude was 25 yrs old!

As for the blacksmiths. I am a professionally trained farrier and will be horseshoeing full time starting in spring. (been part-time for a while) The car just made blacksmiths/farriers more of a specialized field. Especially farriers now a days. Ask a farrier how much he charges for a trim or a trim and to set 4 shoes. Then ask him how many he does a week, lol.

 

"Cell" phone? "Texting"? "Twitter"?

Ok, seriously, I have a cell phone. It gets carried when I travel or ride the bike. It gets turned on if I need to make a call. It gets turned off immediately thereafter.

I'm told it's possible to text on it, never tried, don't care.

One of my daughters is in the habit of interrupting calls with her Mom on the landline to answer her f**king cell phone. I told her if she ever did that to me, I'd hang up, and the next time I saw her, she'd need a proctologist to recover her phone.

Unless your expecting a call from the heart transplant waiting list, it's just plain rude to interrupt one conversation to start another. In fact, smart phones are the cause of more rudeness than any other bit of technology I can think of.

I may not be able to stop it, but I don't have to like it, and I damn sure refuse to "get used to it."

 

For sure, the cell (smart) phone is an over used device. Does every teenage kid need one............No. My wife just had to have one. We got our first one back in the 1990's. It was a bag phone, and it worked just fine. My wife won't go anywhere without her cell.

Women like to have a cell, because it gives them a way to get help if they feel they are getting into a bad situation.

I have a cell phone, but it sits on my bookcase gathering dust. My wife forces me to take the cell phone when I go on a trip, on the bike or on an airplane. When I'm out and about on public transit or on an airplane, I prefer to talk to a live person next to me, rather than stare at a tiny screen.

I'm thankful they brought in "distracted driving laws" here in Alberta. Before that law came in, people were driving while talking/dialing/texting! Driving a motor vehicle is a full time job.

 

We have 4 or 5 farriers south of Dallas, and there's plenty of work to go around. They do very well. A true craft sir.
Incidentally, a fair number of larger aircraft repair companies do not allow private electronics in the building nowadays. I think that's just fine. It's a huge distraction. I worked for 15 years without one, and got along just fine. I did not have a mobile phone that I paid for myself until January, and I will be killing it in April, when I return to Texas.

 

You better have a strong back little bill. My wife does our 4 horses herself (barefoot) No the HORSES are barefoot. And I wouldn't dream of trying to do it. I laughed my ass off the first time I saw a farrier work on a draft horse, He leaned the horse on a wall to work on the foot.
For the most part don't bother looking at craigslist if you don't text. Often as not I haven't talked to the guy till we are trading the item for cash.

 

LOL Gary. I use a Hoof Jack. Notice the box I sent you? It's the knees that bother the most, but since the Hoof Jack, it's a whole lot better. Plus I'm short. That actually helps.

 

Made her a stand out of an old flywheel years ago. But I might make one of those for her Christmas present. Might even be better than the splitting maul she got for her birthday!