Hi-Tech or Low Tech

[Mortblanc]

Sounds like the group that once thought the electricity was too dangerous for use in homes, land line telephones were the work of the devil, automobiles would never catch on, radio was a passing fad, no one would sit in front of a TV set through all that dribble and computers were good for business and government but would never be a household item.

Give it up Mary, the technology is now 30 years old and a whole generation has grown up NOT knowing what it was like to NOT have a cell phone.

Why would you not want to control your boiler by phone, or check the CCTV at your house, or turn on the porch light from your vehicle, or even get notice that something you use constantly is on offer for 1/2 price if that function is available? On top of that you can always ignore features you do not want to use or block services you find irritating.

Using those functions does not make one less of a person, and not using them does not make one a superior person, just one less well prepared. I am constantly using my phone to take pictures when doing repairs, just to remind me of what the device looked like before I ruined it. There are also plant identification apps useful for foraging and medical apps with first aid information.

Texting is not only a survival skill it has become a standard method of general communication world wide with alert notices and emergency reports being sent to every phone in an entire nation on a fraction of a second notice.

One of the most irritating things I have been confronted with lately is one of the members of my small group of close friends refuses to provide himself with a cell phone.

He has a land line but never answers it or checks his messages and he has a computer and never checks his e-mail.

My friends and I are constantly making plans and meeting for different activities and we are also constantly being interrupted by situational changes that prevent us appearing for some of those functions. It is a matter of courtesy.

We communicate by text to alert each other of changes so that one person will not show up half way across town to a no-show meeting. We also use the phones to access the internet, GPS functions and other daily uses that legitimize their existence. We are all old geezers well into our 60s and remember having to hunt for a public phone to make important calls, hope you could catch the person near their phone, then wondering what disease we had just caught from using the device.

With texting one does not have to answer the call immediately, the message will show up the next time the person picks up the phone, even if it is days latter. That is handy since I do not carry my phone around with me daily, it lives on the charging station most of its life. I do check it a couple of times daily. At my age one never knows when a friend or family member will die and I might want to pay my respects.

Texting has a valid function for preppers. In an emergency one can get a text message out when voice service is down and land lines and electric are both down. If my battery goes down after several ours of texting I can move to my vehicle battery and communicate for days.

During our Hurricane Katrina, and during most other regional emergencies, texting was the last comm to fail the average user and people were getting text messages out at the height of those tragedies. We are 12 years down the road now and the systems are even better.

The only people that will be able to communicate longer than your text service will be the ham radio guys and no one wants to talk to them anyway.

BTW, all those people you see walking along with their noses pressed to their phones are not texting, they are playing computer games. And those annoying phone calls that interrupt your dinners and meeting are not real, they are rescue calls planned in advance so the person can leave if they desire. Anyone that really wants to have a conversation across the table will turn their pone off, then check their text massages when the meeting is over.