I Want a Stupidphone
Recently, Mrs H and I broke down and took a radical step in our personal lives. We bought our first smartphone.
It may be a surprise that this is being said by me in 2018. It's like saying we just now discovered the wheel. Especially since I'm hardly less than Internet savvy, right?
The main reason we bought the thing had little to do with making phone calls. Mrs H is discriminating about her music choices and can't stand most of what's on the radio. (Especially the megaphonic 60 seconds ads.) We got the smartphone so she could stream music in the car on the way to work.
Given the cost, though, we also made it our home phone. We didn't want to do that. Because our power company loses the juice every time a yak sneezes in Siberia, we had hoped to keep a landline. But we found out that (at least where we are) it's easier to get coelacanth teeth than it is to get a landline.
I'd rather not have a "smart" phone following me around so that I'm at the beck and call of incoming callers. So the phone will generally be kept in another place. But there's more to it than the mere annoyance of a phone that you can allow to follow you like a rat of Hamelin. As I've discovered through my research on how technology affects the brain, having technology on your person at all times can lead to a degree of mental impairment. The modern smartphone, I like to say, is a busy box for adults. It keeps the brain stimulated, frequently with trivialities. To that extent, it can become a sort of dispenser of electronic heroin.
Oh, how's that relate to apologetics, right. Well, the reader I'd need to explain that to is the sort who is already a victim, ironically enough. As I say in the linked article, you can't compose a theodicy in 140 characters or less. The mental impairment caused by technology addiction is a deadly enemy of apologetics -- a more effective way of blunting the effect of apologetics than cloning Richard Carrier 100 times.
Sad to say, we may come to the point where the only way to make apologetics effective with technology addicts is to take away their smartphones and go back to communicating something like, oh, this:
Maybe a global electromagentic pulse would actually be doing us a favor, eh?
It may be a surprise that this is being said by me in 2018. It's like saying we just now discovered the wheel. Especially since I'm hardly less than Internet savvy, right?
The main reason we bought the thing had little to do with making phone calls. Mrs H is discriminating about her music choices and can't stand most of what's on the radio. (Especially the megaphonic 60 seconds ads.) We got the smartphone so she could stream music in the car on the way to work.
Given the cost, though, we also made it our home phone. We didn't want to do that. Because our power company loses the juice every time a yak sneezes in Siberia, we had hoped to keep a landline. But we found out that (at least where we are) it's easier to get coelacanth teeth than it is to get a landline.
I'd rather not have a "smart" phone following me around so that I'm at the beck and call of incoming callers. So the phone will generally be kept in another place. But there's more to it than the mere annoyance of a phone that you can allow to follow you like a rat of Hamelin. As I've discovered through my research on how technology affects the brain, having technology on your person at all times can lead to a degree of mental impairment. The modern smartphone, I like to say, is a busy box for adults. It keeps the brain stimulated, frequently with trivialities. To that extent, it can become a sort of dispenser of electronic heroin.
Oh, how's that relate to apologetics, right. Well, the reader I'd need to explain that to is the sort who is already a victim, ironically enough. As I say in the linked article, you can't compose a theodicy in 140 characters or less. The mental impairment caused by technology addiction is a deadly enemy of apologetics -- a more effective way of blunting the effect of apologetics than cloning Richard Carrier 100 times.
Sad to say, we may come to the point where the only way to make apologetics effective with technology addicts is to take away their smartphones and go back to communicating something like, oh, this:
Maybe a global electromagentic pulse would actually be doing us a favor, eh?
Comments
Blogger Mark Sutherin said...
Apologists are always complaining about this or that reason being a challenge to faith. Kids going to college and learning about the world. Internet having information at your fingertips to fact check preachers assertions.
you confusing apologists with ideologues.I want information to be available in a free society
Not having mandatory prayer in school.
I am opposed to mandatory prayer in school,
Etc. Look, maybe coming up with actual evidence or better arguments would do your position good, instead of complaining about people being exposed to other information after crawling out from the rock that people try to force on them.
you can;t answer any of my arguments,I already have the research to blow any atheist out of the water.
On Monday Ill be discussing actual argumemt here's the background you need to know before you read that,On Metacrock's blog
the scientific study of mystical experience