Non Sequitur by Wiley Miller for August 25, 2022

Just figuring that out now, are we, Joe?

“Unresolvable ambiguity in source code.”

What would we do without opposing thumbs

Back in the good old days, you just needed to remember 7 numbers to call your family. Now it’s ten, and that’s assuming that you’re calling and not emailing or messaging them. Then it’s something else you need to memorize. It’s too much! And for what? To speak to your sister for a half hour as she complains about her kids (again)? It’s not worth the brain space.

One other thing we have to do now that technology did not prepare us for is using the “proper” pronouns. But, for some weird reason, people never seem to respond favorably when I tell them mine are “who”, “whom”, and “whose”. I think they’re just interrogatively bigoted.

No one has ever needed to memorize phone numbers (other than 911). We used to have lists taped to the cabinet nearest the phone, then Rolodexes and address books, then speed dial, and on and on. Pretty ridiculous to think memorizing phone numbers is an important skill.

Happy 109th, Walt.

“We have met the enemy and he is us.” –Walt Kelly (1913 Aug. 25 – 1973 Oct. 18)

Unlike the Big Brother that was forced on people in Orwell’s dystopian novel 1984, our latter-day Big Brothers/Big Data have seduced and anesthetized those who are gullible with convenience and an appearance of safety. Our latter-day Big Brother’s motives are much the same however, which are to monitor, control, and exploit you. Big Brother/Big Data is most certainly about law enforcement,too. It’s only a fool who says that they’re not worried ‘cuz they’re not doing anything wrong. It’s Big Brother, not you, who decides if what you are doing is right or wrong. Often, you haven’t a clue.

Just today got a new iPhone. Everytime I pick it up it wants to do something for me (Siri?) I just wanted a phone to call somebody.

I’m not so worried about people forgetting phone numbers. I’m worried about people forgetting how to spell.

Why is he complaining? If it weren’t for technology then you could not even PHONE your brother. Wanna go back to message-runners taking days to deliver?

Tech does not turn our brains to mush (though video game are pretty good at that).

Tech FREES our minds from menial tasks like remembering phone numbers so we can concentrate on more significant stuff like Tik Tok challenges! ;-)

Thanks to Tommy Tutone, EVERYONE knows Jenny’s number.

This is a running joke with my son: I sometimes comment off-hand about some entertainment person, a TV show, or a historical event — not really curious enough to call on my “mental research librarian” to “bring up the files from the memory vault.” I either remember the desired pertinent details right away, or after only few minutes — it’s seldom THAT important. If the info pops up after longer than that, well, apparently the memory-library card catalog drawer was way long, and the researcher had to flip through it all.

It used to bother me in those few moments of the discussion when the information was needed. But, no biggie. It’s not as if there were nuclear codes to recall as intercontinental missiles zero in. Life goes on.

My son, in contrast, whips out his cell phone and connects to the Internet. It’s his Exo-Brain. He starts to call up all kinds of info related, or not, to my original point. I have to cut him short.

He gets so mad when I tell him reliance on his Internet device will make his brain “flabby.” That it will shrink and lose its “mental tone.” And now, here I am with still more info to cram into limited storage space, possibly crowding out something important somewhere. I pretend to act resentful.

I have never gotten old before, but from observation of those older I know I must reconcile to losing some abilities, just slowly, I hope. My son is young and still thinks he’ll live in full capacity to the very end. Maybe with advances in science he will. Go for it, kids.

Albert Einstein famously refused to memorize anything he could look up easily.

Didn’t know Joe had a brother. But now I can see the resemblence.

Yeah, Bob, there’s a lot of that going around these days.

Guess I was already mush. I had sticky notes in my pockets of everyone’s number. My memory has never been good.

Which means making that one phone call from jail is difficult – or contacting anyone when your phone dies or is lost.

One problem we face. We call a company to make appointment for repairs. They say workman will call when he is on the way or to set a time. BUT workman uses his personal phone which does not show company name and maybe no name at all. So, as we do not answer unknown numbers, and no message is left an answering machine, repairs are either cancelled or delayed. Call the company to find out why workman didn’t show, answer is he called but didn’t get an answer so he thought we weren’t home. Confusion reigns.

Well the previous telephone number I recall from memory which we had some 57 years ago was GL2-7826, GL was for Gladstone which was a georgraphic area.

My brain works differently: it tries to remember what the screen of my phone looked like the last time I called someone and reads the number in that picture.

Last year Oxonians taught AI to “read” an analog clock. Young people increasingly can’t. Be afraid. Be very afraid.

The day I realised that I didn’t remember a single phone number anymore and that everything was in a single electronic appliance, I bought a small phone book and wrote them all down. Just in case. Same for my passwords. Because to reach your account in the cloud you need your password and it was in a single electronic appliance…

Don’t forget that you only needed one phone number per family. Now each person has their own phone. My brother has a wife & 3 children 5 numbers instead of 1.

I can’t remember my own cell number, let alone anyone else’s.

Proud that I can remember my OWN number. Anyone else’s? No way.

Technology has always done that. Before the printing press, people had much better oral memories.

My daughter has had the same number for about 18 years. I know the area code, and I know it has two 6s in it. On the other hand, I can recite my childhood phone number, and my folks moved and lost that number over 40 years ago. yeah.

Socrates? Socrates, as written by Plato? Is that you?

Socrates (in Plato’s telling) was against writing and reading because they would cause people to stop using their memories.

There was an Isaac Asimov short story set in the future where a man was thought to be a genius because he could do addition IN HIS HEAD!

I have to admit, I get mentally lax too. My credit card bill shows current charges and pending charges. I use a calculator to add them up.

As a teen, I used to add up grocery items with a pencil on a brown paper bag and make change in my head using what I call “Ten’s Complement.”

This has been a common complaint since the days of Homer. How many could recite the Iliad and Odyssey from memory once that civilization eroding system of common writing came along? The reality is, it just allows our brain to reconfigure — put the neurons to the greatest current use.

I was never very good at remembering phone numbers, but I used to be able to recite Z80 hex instructions from memory for instance.

BEechwood 4-5789. How’s that for a memory?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Us18AUBM2RI

On examining my own memory, the only mobile phone number I recall is my own, and sometimes I have to think for a few seconds to retrieve it.

On the other hand, I seem to recall quite a few landline numbers, including some that are no longer active.

I can relate

The older I get the more I appreciate Siri, my “Contacts”, and stored email addresses. Makes it a lot easier to fake competency…

I used to have several phone numbers memorized. These days, it’s all passwords, and far more than phone numbers ever were.

People tend to demand things be made easier and then complain that we are getting soft. …sigh

Frankly, I no longer see the “better” in memorization. Each of us memorizes those things necessary to what we enjoy or work with on a daily basis. Okay, okay, knowing alphabetical order and the multiplication tables are exceptions (and maybe spelling), but, for the most part, there’s just so much more to know now than when I was a kid in the ‘50s—and there was a lot to know then. I think it’s much more important to know HOW to search for knowledge that you need, and HOW to determine if that knowledge is solid, or pseudo-bilge put together to trap the gullible.

Your cell phone area code is a good indication of where you lived around the year 2000….

i don’t need to put the 1 first in my stored numbers in my contact list – perhaps the phone brain adds it on its own when dialing – but if i manually type in the numbers to make a call i’m pretty sure i have to use a 1 first

Sorry, Joe, but that’s as old as the hills. It started when that new technology known as the printing press was invented. Prior to Gutenberg, you had to remember everything. The news service (you may know them as troubadours) staff could remember a 1,000 line lay on a single hearing and repeat it word perfect on a single hearing. Can you do that today? No because everything is in a book. I went to the grocery store and the bill was $12.19 and I gave her a twenty. The cashier had to have the cash register tell her what my change was and was proud of herself that she could count it out backwards to me. I said you mean you can’t look at the 12.19 and immediately say 7.81? Apparently the answer was no.

simultaneously ingesting multiple substances of choice

Bob reminds me of Richard Nixon…

The guy on the right reminds me of Nixon.

I still remember my friends’ phone numbers, but that’s because they’re all number combinations that are easy to remember.

A meme I saw just today, after reading this cartoon, said, “I keep some people’s phone numbers in my phone just so I know not to answer when they call.”

No comment-taking the 5th.

You can’t recall something you never learned. It is a waste of mental space to memorize phone numbers. You don’t need to do that today.

I grew up when learning to use a table of logarithms was an important skill for calculations more complex than basic arithmetic. I learned to use a mechanical calculator—Marchant and Friden were the leading brands—in my introductory stat class. I could use all the scales on the log log slide rule I got in high school. When I worked in a gas station without a cash register I god pretty good at mental arithmetic including multiplying and long division. I abandoned them all for calculators. Now I can do it all on my phone. Oh, I still figure price per ounce in my head at the grocery store. Tech is wonderful. It’s convenient to know how to use the manual override in emergencies though.

Just remembered a recording from the 50s that I will never forget. If you recall being on a party line, you might have heard something like this:

“You have reached a party on your line. Please hang up and wait for the called party to answer, then pick up the receiver.”

For those who don’t remember Party Lines, they were early systems where we would share a physical phone line with other people. It wasn’t unusual to pick up the phone and hear a conversation. Of course we would hang up and wait a while. Once we got dial tone, we could make our call. If you needed to call someone on your party line, you would get the message above. If you wanted your own line and number, you paid extra.

I keep a landline so I can call my cell phone when I can’t find it…but I can still recite the first 18 lines of the prologue to the Canterbury Tales in Old English that we had to memorize in Senior English 50 years ago.Memory is weird like that.

Didn’t realize that they were brothers. Howcum the one looks like Tricky Dick?

Thinking is not reciting from memory. It’s putting together separate thoughts into a new, useful idea.

But you need to know important phone numbers in case you lose your phone and have to call them from a pay ph—uh, so you can call them from someone else’s phone.

3 kids and I do not know their phone numbers and a host of other relates.

I know few of my family and friends numbers but I can remember my number from childhood. Go figure.

One ringy dingy. Two ringy dingy…..

These days I can remember things from 50 or 60 years ago but can’t remember what I had for dinner last night. Some of my female friends give me the bizznizz ‘cuz I’m not up on tabloid/entertainment material. That’s OK; I’m not up on sports either, except when UCLA wins.

I don’t even remember my Own phone number.

I hardly ever call it.

My parents home phone-besides being a party line-was 877-7023… FYI-I’m 72 1/2…

Worse than forgetting phone numbers, can these guys find their way home without using a GPS?

I never knew they were brothers. I’ve missed that all along.

You talkin’ about the hamster living inside your skull, Bob?