Prickly City by Scott Stantis for February 07, 2021

DEFLECTING much??

I don’t know my wife’s phone number without looking it up on my phone.

Heck, i don’t know my own phone number

She has a point.

Marjorie Taylor Greene is the epitome of technology making people indescribably dumb!

Which part of that exchange was ‘wit’?

I mean, we’ve gone through four years having a president who has NO wit whatsoever, exactly like his total lack of empathy, so maybe it’s gotten to the cartoonist.

At least it’s not a lie.

only reason i know my number is from the muscle memory from inputting it into the phone when I open an account..

You can train your memory if you want. Not lost, just unused, kinda like our civility…

Technology has made people lazier, and little scared. Anti-Social Media has made people more xenophobic. When was the last time any one has talked to a stranger in a park or restaurant? The local park has 6 public chessboards that are always empty now. But I can still engage in a good game at my local coffee shop. Interaction is how we learn and understand.

Nope, we just moved our skillsets to other areas. Why remember a number, when you now just need to remember where to go to call your friend. This is part of why I left my generation, weaka$$ thinking.

Technology does that because it makes memory less necessary, which is not the same thing as getting stupider. The evidence is that before the invention of the printing press, people were much better at retaining oral information.

Well, it depends on how people use the technology…

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In 2019, a source came to us with a digital file containing the precise locations of more than 12 million individual smartphones for several months in 2016 and 2017. The data is supposed to be anonymous, but it isn’t.

We found celebrities, Pentagon officials and average Americans.

It became clear that this data — collected by smartphone apps and then fed into a dizzyingly complex digital advertising ecosystem — was a liability to national security, to free assembly and to citizens living mundane lives.

It provided an intimate record of people whether they were visiting drug treatment centers, strip clubs, casinos, abortion clinics or places of worship.

✁

Now, one year later, we’re in a very similar position. But it’s far worse.

A source has provided another data set, this time following the smartphones of thousands of Trump supporters, rioters and passers-by in Washington, D.C., on January 6, as Donald Trump’s political rally turned into a violent insurrection.

At least five people died because of the riot at the Capitol. Key to bringing the mob to justice has been the event’s digital detritus: location data, geotagged photos, facial recognition, surveillance cameras and crowdsourcing.

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From Trump’s Rally to Congress

This time-lapse animation shows smartphones as they moved from Donald Trump’s rally to the Capitol.

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From: nytimes.com/2021/02/05/opinion/capitol-attack-cellphone-data.html

Maybe anti-social media has made people more stupid, there are group of “contributers” on this very comment section who don’t seem to know there is a 46th president in the White House today. I mean its on Facebook and everything.

Osama Bin Laden: “Yeah, I didn’t actually fly any airliner into any building, and thousands of U.S. citizens died as a result of my financing and my (lack of) planning…”

“But everyone should just move on, now.”

Before the time of cell phones, I had to keep a list of phone numbers written down. In fact, everything that I had to remember had to be written down somewhere. The only thing a cell phone has done is change the location of where I keep things written down.

Nailed it, C-girl.

Carmen is right. was in the hospital for 16 days. One question I was asked several times was what was my wife’s phone number. I was totally unable to remember it as I always just go to her name in my phone directory and let the phone dial her number

I guess that explains the current state of affairs. We’ve accidentally created spare brain capacity by removing data we used to have to remember. This spare capacity is now being filled by whatever we are listening to and watching at the moment. That stuff is not usually real.

Joke’s on you! That’s how I use my loyalty card at the supermarket!

In 1950 there was a movie called “Champagne for Caesar.” Vincent Price played a quiz show host and Ronald Coleman was the contestant that kept winning. They got to the ultimate jackpot and Vincent asked the toughest question he could think of: “What is your Social Security number?”

I remember thinking, “This is before the various unemployment scares when we all had to fill out resumes.”

Coyotes have pockets?

I don’t think technology is making us any dumber, just lazier.

The inability to remember a string of numbers is not a sign of stupidity. It has nothing to do with technology — some people’s brains are just wired a little differently.