Who Needs Verbal Communication Anyway?

(2017/03...) - It's something often written/commented on - but the reality of sitting next to someone who only - grudgingly - talks to the person they are actually working next to (and with - on occasion), but picks up their bloody micro-computer ("smartphone") every 30 seconds or so to exchange messages with people far away... is quite depressing.  And so to do something about the frustration/irritation, I've (what else?) turned to the computer in front of me to write this.  I can't talk to the people I'm actually *with*, so (naturally) [sarcasm?] I turn to the wires to hopefully communicate with someone out there - somewhere - looking at this on their computer screen.

..... Yeah... it's so depressing, that I've already run out of things to say.  That's it - above.  Ah, an accent to my communication blues today was another work colleague who (out of the blue) said today how wonderful technology is.  "Just think..." they enthused, "thirty years ago, people couldn't do all the wonderful things we do with computers now!".
   True enough, and I like computer technology myself, but just as its dark side is becoming more visible (and/or harder to ignore), I can't start myself bouncing off the walls with enthusiasm about how wonderful computers are today - in March of 2017.  But I need to cut my colleague some slack.  When you first become aware of being able to do things (via a computer) that you didn't think you could do, it *is* exciting.  Still the always-texting, never-talking biped sitting next to me depresses me - a lot.
   I thought I was finished, but there's that theme of people only reading the news (or propaganda masquerading as the news) they want to see, and so it is with text between friends.  With distance being no issue (for text), why bother talking with the person next to you when you could be spending that time exchanging text with an old friend on the other side of the planet?  (Said half seriously and half in sarcasm....)

Update:  Fast-forward to June 2017....  I had decided not to post the above, but over the months, and very much so today, the young person constantly texting with people via her bloody smartphone is irritating me all over again.  I remember back in... 1997 I think it was, when I was walking down the street (on my way to the station), I passed a couple of young people walking side-by-side, but talking with someone far away on their cell phones.  I thought then, have thought over the years, and continue to think today, that it's rude and kind of stupid to ignore the people you are actually with in favor of people far away (via computers).  But... that's the world we live in I guess.
   And - an interesting thing - now that I'm writing behind the back of the person sitting at the next desk to me (but a million miles away in all respects other than physical), suddenly, by talking to you (hello computer screen buddies!) with her out-of-the-loop, suddenly I don't feel as bad about her continually poking her smartphone screen in text communication with people I don't know.  So there it is - we snub each other by talking with others via the screen - and suddenly everything is okay?  Well... things feel a *little* better.  Her bloody smartphone and thumb entry of little blurbs back and forth with someone is *still* bloody irritating!

Lyle (Hiroshi) Saxon
www5d.biglobe.ne.jp/~LLLtrs/
youtube.com/lylehsaxon
lylehsaxon.blogspot.jp/
lookback1997.blogspot.jp/
tokyoht.blogspot.jp/

Low-Resolution Everything

February 9th, 2017
   Writing is a strange thing - or maybe a very ordinary thing (come to think about it) in that the longer you don’t write, the less you have to say, and then when you actually force yourself to write a little, the more you write, the more you want to write.

   At the moment, there are storms of thoughts raging through my consciousness, but then I stop and think, “Wait... what meaningful thoughts can you put into the wires now anyway?  Everyone can see it - friends and enemies alike.  It can be endlessly manipulated, never erased...” and so here I stand - on the dock - in the harbor - ready to launch ships of thought, but abandoning the journey, as the concept of... well, what I just said above, kills the urge to write.

   Next thought - “Photography! ..... But wait... anything recognizable is becoming taboo.  Faces, car license plates, building names in the background... the current popular thing seems to be to black out (fuzzy out?) anything recognizable....”  I was recently asked if I would buy a “4k” video camera.  I can’t anyway (too poor), but even if I could, what’s the point?  When you need to kill detail to protect a privacy already lost (you can’t exist in the modern world without your every move being recorded by security cameras, etc.), why would you want *more* detail?  Instead of blacking out sections of a high resolution picture, I’d rather just take an overall low resolution picture and be able to use it as-is without mutilating it.
   Maybe that’ll be the next marketing thing: “Low-Res Fuzzy Pictures! - Yes, you too can take low-resolution pictures and actually use them without molesting them first!  It’s Amazing!”  [sarcasm]
   So there you have it.  In this Sick-Sick-Sick-Sick-Sick World we live in, only Low Resolution text and Low Resolution pictures are... are... ........
   - LHS