Skip to main content

Watch don't Fit

While Silicon Valley implodes with their gadget mania its believers will consume all that we produce.  So it is with some friends and neighbors who as smart as they are do fall prey to the lure of the tech.


One of them, a mom, has decided that she will wear a Fitbit on one wrist and an Apple Smartwatch on  the other. 


When asked why - she said the Fitbit tracks her movements better.  'Fitbit' to the uninformed is a physical motion sensor based wrist band/strap that will convert your steps into a digital readout.


Now most smart phones already have this feature built into them (at no added cost) but that is not relevant since she believes that this gadget is the best representation of her limbic activity.


Also the Apple contraption literally and figuratively is competing for the same activity based messaging with its own branded interface.


So for someone like me who is happy to simply get a chance to walk and is least interested in tech for the sake of tech this is quite a curious perspective.


I don't like other devices telling me what I already know, and so I was surprised that she even went to sleep wearing these.


When asked why - the response was it tells her how many times she woke to tend to the baby in the middle of the night.  It also gives her documented leverage over the spouse who then can be coerced to do the dishes.


This is what the valley can do to you - sell you gadgets that you are beholden to and that your life's quality will be dictated by their existence and alerts.  Whether you can be alert (or get a full night's sleep) with all these pings, dings, and texts is debatable what with distracted driving, walking and sleeping becoming an epidemic - enough that someone could come along and make money espousing the virtues of 'how to regulate your life without gadgets'.


Add to this the computerization of all things non human - buzz word - Internet of Things - IOT - and you have cars that are getting hacked - imagine John Lennon playing - I am a dreamer - in your Tesla down the CA 101 freeway and you going from 70 to 0 without music; because a native in the parallel lane just hacked you with his Apple iphone and all your dreams come to a screeching halt.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

But What If We're Wrong?

I attempted to read this book by author Chuck Klosterman backward to forward but it started hurting my brain so I decided to stop and do it like any other publication in the English language.  Start from page 1 and move to the right. Witty, caustic and thought provoking this is a book you want to read if you believe that the status quo might, just might be wrong. At times bordering on being contrarian about most things around us it tries to zero in on the notion of what makes anything believable and certain in our minds.  The fact that there is a fact itself is ironic.  Something analogous to the idea that you can never predict the future because there is no future. Many books and movies have tried to play on this concept - best that I recollect (I think I am) was 'The Truman Show'.  This book by Klosterman attempts to provoke the reader to at least contemplate that what they think they know may be wrong. He uses examples like concept of gravity, and how it ...
2 comments
Read more

You are important to us

Followed by piano music.   Followed by 'we are experiencing heavier than usual call volume'.  Sounds macabre like bleeding during menstruation or after a ghastly attack with a weapon on a hemophiliac.  Sorry Mrs. Johnson but it appears little Gertrude here has been bleeding heavier than usual what with her night time activities competing with the woodchucks in your neighborhood. Some services even go as far as to pick a random day to say - 'if you were to call us during the Chinese lunar month when the moon is axiomatically hugging the polar star with Jupiter intravenous when call volume is light'.  Well I will be damned.  I thought  I had checked with my astrologer before I placed this well focused call but  I guess this is what you get for listening to a quack. Umph! I am not sure which marketing genius came up with this personal touch concept of informing the caller that you are really a jackass for actually calling the customer serv...
Post a Comment
Read more

Of Jims and Johns

Here is another essay on the subject of first names. As in birth names. Or names provided to an offspring at birth. While the developed world tends to shy away from the exotic like Refrigerator or Coca Cola for their new production there is a plethora of Jims and Johns and Bobs or Robs. Speaking of which I do not think there is a categoric decision point at the time of birth if a child will be hereafter called as Bob. I mean have not yet met a toddler called Bob or Rob for that matter. At some point though the parental instinct to mouth out multiple syllables runs out and they switch from calling the crawler Robert to simply Robbie to Rob. Now speaking of - it is strange that the name sounds like something you would not want Rob to do - i.e. Rob anyone. Then why call someone that? After all Rob Peter to Pay Paul is not exactly a maxim to live a young life? Is it? Perhaps Peter or Paul might want to have a say in it? Then there is this matter of going to the John. Why degrad...
2 comments
Read more