Orphaned technology or technology orphans?

December 8, 2006 1:59 PM

Where once geeks' biggest worry was orphaned technology, now it's technology orphans.
posted by GuyZero (10 comments total)

From the article:

Safety is another issue. Will Singletary, a 9-year-old in Atlanta, doesn't approve of his dad's proclivity for typing while driving. "It makes me worried he's going to crash," he says. "He only looks up a few times." His dad, private banker Ross Singletary, calls it "a legit concern." He adds: "Some emails are important enough to look at en route."

posted by russilwvong at 2:52 PM on December 8, 2006

This is why you never have children
posted by saraswati at 2:54 PM on December 8, 2006

He adds: "Some emails are important enough to look at en route."

Wow, what a flaming asshole. Hopefully his kid won't end up a flaming corpse.
posted by MikeKD at 3:22 PM on December 8, 2006

And really, what a piece of crap article:
*NEW FLASH!!! Addictions harm families!!!
*Not to mention that I'm sure this is a problem all over the nation, with the what, 12 million or so (6.5 BB, doubled to include Treos) devices out of 300+ million people.
*The household tension comes as gadgets like BlackBerrys and Treos -- once primarily tools for investment bankers and lawyers...
  *Ledbetter: commercial real-estate developer
  *Ellin: "Entourage" creator
  *Pecore: co-owner, specialty grocery store
  *Colonna / Chang: chief executive of a nonprofit group
  *Singletary: private banker
  *unnamed New Jersey executive
  *Huffington: as in Arianna Huffington
  *Balsillie: false-dichotomy spewing asshole
  *DuMont: not-specified

...not exactly low-profile, blue collar folk.
*How much did RIM pay for this ad in the WSJ?
posted by MikeKD at 3:43 PM on December 8, 2006

Blackberries + workaholics = zombies.

My old boss has his Blackberry either strapped to his side, on route to his hands or being struck by his thumbs at hyperspeed, at ALL times. He'll bring it into meetings and text during the session, he'll bring it home with him, he'll use it while driving. He's a fragmented and ineffective employee at work, and a fragmented and ineffective family member at home. Half of his attention is constantly diverted elsewhere. It makes nnnnnno sense to me how Blackberry users refuse to draw the line between work and home life. Sometimes, berryfolks, you just got ta let it go...
posted by Milkman Dan at 3:58 PM on December 8, 2006

I was an early PCS phone adopter (all digital baby), I quickly grabbed onto the SMS trend, and I was one of the first people I knew to set up my phone as a POP client.

But I quickly realized that once everyone knew that I was that reachable, I was expected to be able to be reached at any time. I could easily have seen falling into this trap, so I totally changed my ways. I stopped checking email on my phone, I set my phones ringer up so the only person who can make my phone actually produce a ring tone is my wife. Everyone else just goes straight to voice mail.

Now they know to just leave me a message, and I get back to them at my convenience.

It's much better that way.
posted by quin at 4:08 PM on December 8, 2006

Wall + Street + Journal = Stupid Article. The stupidity, if not necessarily the agenda, of the WSJ OpEd page has been clearly leaking through the firewall into its reporting recently, and this is the latest example. The list of trusted/trustworthy news sources continue to shrink...
posted by wendell at 4:24 PM on December 8, 2006

I gotta say, text messaging...bah. Or what MikeKD said.

Who in the heck wants to be able to be reached at all times?
posted by maxwelton at 5:03 PM on December 8, 2006

Who in the heck wants to be able to be reached at all times?

Type-A personalities, and those inexperienced, naîve, or self-centred enough to believe that they're an irreplaceable integral part of their organisation?

My view: if you wait long enough, everybody finds out just how "irreplaceable" they are...
posted by Pinback at 7:33 PM on December 8, 2006

I'd imagine a Treo or other similar high-end phone/pda/gadget that enables you to communicate in the way the article states is analagous to the first cellphone I had when I was in high school: I felt really important walking around the mall talking on it, but really I was just an enormous fuckotron.

The last few times I've ended up with a broken and/or functionally-limited cellphone, I've purposely not repaired it so I could have a break from being irritated by it.

Is this really what passes for content in a major nationwide newspaper?
posted by ninjew at 1:25 AM on December 9, 2006