Am I Smart Now?
I bet I look five years younger, too, now that I have a bigger, more fragile piece of plastic in my pocket. Well. . . It's too big and cumbersome to ride comfortably in my pocket, so I bought a belt clip case to go with my new E-toy. It has a fancy enough name that Big Bro now thinks I am downright sexy. Hubs and I are both still worried about the addict behavior Big Bro shows toward E-toys, in addition to the predators and chaos which live in the gamer realm his parents were lost in. Game sites are nearly as shark infested as dating/porn sites. Surfing those shark infested waters requires far more vigilance than Hubs and I care to invest.
LLC business has long been brow-beating me almost as hard as the social media crowd over my dumb phone's limited capabilities. Not my circus, not my monkey. I promise I am impressed, my E-Wizards. Applauding from a safe distance now. . . The demands of the 2nd parenting career tipped that equation for me. I believe I am doing well with separating 21st century Child Dating from the Child Dating I knew in the kiddie whorehouses. Even without that mind fuck, the academic apps have become an intregal part of the parenting gig. It's time.
Big Bro's feeding frenzy over discovering a latest greatest name brand hanging from my belt has further convinced me the child is heavily addicted to E-crack. Is there an app for that? Prolly, but I believe I will join Hubby's long established party line that his latest greatest E-toys are tools of a trade and not to be played with the way Mommy and Daddy taught him. Just as Hubby's E-toys are corporate property, my new E-toy is LLC property. No gaming.
I have been watching the GPS market closely since the satellite data started coalescing the tech capabilities for said GPS. The GPS I *really* want is finally approaching affordable. For now, the smart phone GPS capabilities are better than nothing. That would be the app I kinda wished for in my dumb phone more than once. That piece is already in the fine tuning process.
Onward through the fog. . . Am I smart now?
Replies
Id gladly love a GPS that could point me to my little shack in the woods. I wish there were still pay phones...i would swiftly retire my cellphone. Yes...people are so addicted and protective of their phones that asking anyone to borrow would step into their "safe space". Games and technology. With the exception of helpful technology are sucking the lifeforce out of humanity. I dont use any social media with the exception of this site because its my only lifeline. Its helpful technology.
My little shack in the woods is off-grid, Sage. Homeland Security's GPS would have to ply special measures to find it, if I gave them reason to look. My greatest security is in not giving them reason to look. If a magic wish fairy appeared to give me the super-power of my choice, I would choose invisibility.
The GPS of my dreams would let me continue working with my fellow tree-huggers in equally off-grid locations around the world. It doesn't tweet twits. Or do those dye-heads twit tweets? ? ? Don't care as much as I know. . . For my senses, my e-tools are not quite as exciting as my hammers and nails. They's just a means to an end and I have a farm to finish renovating. I hope. Now to find the time on the outer edges of the second parenting career. . . I believe I will need to work smarter rather than harder to pull that one off.
Am I smart yet?
I'm getting a kick out of how you keep asking about being "smart" because of your smart phone, arfie. We community college instructors contend every day with how actual smart class material people paid their own hard earned tuition money for cannot be delivered often because no one can compete with the distracting lure of their smart phone screens, Some day we may all be brought up short to realize that we were all got outsmarted by that shiny gadget, but if so it seems that day is still in the distant future. On the serious side, I didn't realize game sites were shark infested the way porn sites are, so my sincere prayers go out to you as you seek to set boundaries to protect Big Bro in that area. I can imagine that saying no to him on that score may be a tough sell.
At La UDA, our "Science Communication" profie was constantly harping, "Las maquinas no tienen mentes" in regards to writing and editing for themselves. The typical comeback was over their "3rd World" tech handicaps. He sure was helpful in translating my jaded tech warhorse sarcasm to Spanish. In my own strictly personal observations, "3rd World" tech gurus are skunking our "1st World" Nintendo babies by a significant margin. Wake up and smell the digits, Appy Kids! ! !
At this stage, I'm not too worried about drawing the line for Big Bro. I'm still bigger than he is and I have drawn boundaries with meaner addicts. I sincerely believe E-crack is an addiction which has spread to intercontinental epidemic levels. E-toys are dandy tools, but a dangerous addiction. Kinda like meds? ? ? It's okay to use 'em. Not so okay to let them use you.
I wonder how many bikes Walmart is selling these days? How many nerf footballs and swingsets? Do kids now watch the movie ET and say "Back in the old days...…when people rode bikes....." It is strange to think that one day people will not remember rotary phones, easy bake ovens and telephone books.
In my personal grandparent circles, those bikes, nerf footballs and swingsets are selling like bibles at a Tent Revival. I don't care to do the research, but I'll bet dollars to wishes the bibles get read more often than the battery-free toys are played with. I'm still not far enough into my second parenting career to know what other parents are saying on all this. Please spare me the facebook rhetoric. Most of the parents I have encountered so far keep their heads bowed over their E-toys. Not much eye-contact going on in the kid waiting rooms.
My current favorite nostalgia line is, "Back in the Bad Old Days when people were smarter than phones.. . ."
Addendum:
When I bought Big Bro's PS4, it came with the proviso that he needed at least 5 purples (his teacher's mark for good behavior) in order to have access to his playstation. A month or three into the arrangement, I began to suspect he was getting lesser behavior marks so that I **would** take the e-toy away from him. He had discovered some delightful stuff while away from his playstation and ? ? ? My best guesses get muddy from there.
In this week's go-round, he only had his playstation back for a single night before this mysterious pattern repeated. Observation in progress.