This is a prat of a dawning realisation of the desocialisation technology is having. The Unabomber manifesto makes stark reading - he's mad - but there are elements of truth - will go and find it ....

here is a link to one of the more important areas in it...

[en.wikisource.org]

True that's not is!

I can remember when cell phones first appeared, they was considered very ostentatious (a-hole-ish), but that was because everybody secretly wanted one, not because early adopters where necessarily a-holes. We've seen a lot of new things enter society (VCRs, computers, CD players, cell phones, laptops, HDTVs, etc.) and early adopters were always resented - but it was because a lot of folks secretly wanted the gadget and couldn't afford it yet. Scratch an anti-materialistic revolutionary, find a frustrated shopper.

Now, that doesn't excuse bad manners and unsafe acts with cell phones now that everybody has one.

I totally agree with this guy. I like to use the term techtards for people who are caught up in having to have the absolute newest tech, but don't know why they need it. It's new and nobody else has one. I'll figure how to make it fit in my life later.

You can quit you know. Stop buying new tech, stop using a cell phone, regain your humanity and sanity. Throwing off the cellphone tether was the first step for me. I spent a whole day once off the internet and survived. I even have the t-shirt.

I can honestly say that I am a much better person now that I own an iPhone. (Well, at least in my own mind).

I have been seeing people becoming more discreet with voice calls over time. It can be posited that with the mass adoption of the voice mobile phone, people are now better adapting the use of it socially, or, in the alternative, people are still a-holes.

@baltwade: God damn, that feels so familiar. My whole company is a techtard day care facility... I'm seriously thinking of dumping my cell phone, although giving up the internet for more then a few hours? that's just crazy talk! (wink). I think I'll go for a walk, instead of retreating to my cubibunker for a lunch time web crawl.

I agree with the article. The freedom of conducting a phone call from anywhere has gone too far. When guys regularly walk into public restrooms using bluetooth headsets, fully engaged in phonecalls while pissing, a line has been crossed.

@Way: I've been on the other side of one of those phone calls. Trust me, I'd rather wait and talk later than hear you exercising your prostate in the background. However, I guess I'm lucky that the couple of calls I've gotten from the restroom have all been from the urinals and not the stalls.

@Barcard: Early adopters aren't hated because everyone wants what they have. They're disdained mostly due to their behavior. They'll act as if they're somehow more 'important' just by buying some gadget.

If someone shares what they have, rather than flaunting it, then they're usually received well by their friends and such.

And we can all hardly wait for the day when we will be on a three hour airplane flight with the person in the seat next to us (9-inches from our ear) yelling into his/her cell phone throughout the entire flight to be heard over the engine noise.

Couldn't the same argument have been made 120 years ago about landline phones?

Gadgets don't turn me into an asshole: My personality does.

I know plenty of assholes that don't have lots of new-fangled technology. If I'm going to be an asshole, I'm going to be an asshole with a clear upgrade path.

I know someone who has "moving pictures" in his livingroom! What an a-hole!

I agree. All you cellphone users are assholes. (I'm an asshole for less than an hour per week.)

@GoatMonkey: I know that asshole. Let's get 'im.

You know why there is a correlation to assholes and technology? Abuse. When some douchebag is talking too loud on a phone in a restaurant, or cannot check-in properly because he cannot pause his conversation at the airport, the assumption is that everyone who uses phones is an asshole. However, the rest of us aren't using our phones because we know it inappropriate, not because we do not have them.

Ever had a conversation with someone and they take a phone call with a BT headset, and you are not sure when they stopped talking to you and started the phone convesation? You were talking to an asshole, now you have your way out of the conversation, consider yourself lucky.

The new assholes are those guys with BT headsets on 24/7 - and it's not because everyone wants one - it's not as if they're expensive a la 1980s cellphone - it's because those guys are complete tools and thats the end of it.

He's an asshole for saying we're all ass- hold on gotta take this call on my bluetooth- "HEY 'SUP, NO I'M NOT DOING ANYTHING IMPORTANT RIGHT NOW!!......

ZIM-ZAM!

Anybody that writes a book called "Microserfs" doesn't get to call other people out.

"oh, you are a slave to a large corporation that pays you a more than fair wage." N****a please.

I was an asshole before I got a cell, so I guess I am just a bigger asshole with one, but I don't really care.... LOL

Which I'm pretty sure is the complete opposite of what was written in Microserfs.
Which was basically that technology acts as an extension of our brains and therefore allows us to remember things that would otherwise be forgotten.

But then again, anyone who kills trees to print a disaster like jPod shouldn't be taken seriously.

We should all take a lesson from the Amish (but maybe not as strictly) and evaluate each piece of new technology and determine if it will make our life better before we invest in it.

If we each did this with the tech we already have, we would probably find that half the tech we currently own makes our lives worse not better and immediately dispose of it. Then, moving forward, it would become easier to evaluate the new tech by our experience of knowing what old tech wasn't worth the time, money, energy, effort, etc.

"Less stuff, more experience." - wildness

I am an engineer. I build things for people to use :).

All of my friends are engineers. My co-workers are engineers. My room-mate is an engineer. On an average day, I spend less than ten minutes interacting with people who aren't engineers. I think there is a major disconnect between the common consumer, and the engineers designing products for them (not that I'm complaining).

The most common question we ask ourselves is "Could my mom use it?" (not that we really know), but we never ask "Should my mom use it?" Cell phones in theaters make a friendly example.

There are many types of engineers, but in general, we are all polite in social settings. The engineers working on cellular phones probably had no idea that people would leave their phones on (and try to use them) in theaters. I personally turn my cell phone to vibrate whenever I am in an environment where I know other patrons are not going to want to hear my final fantasy 7 ring-tone. If those engineers knew their technology would be so annoying in a theater environment that the face of pre-movie introductions would change forever, they would have built a suppression device of some sort for theaters.

I suppose my point is, you can't point the finger at technology. Lots of people are jerks. Technology makes your life easier. Technology can make being a jerk easier.

It's up to you, as the offended party, to put a stop to it.

Thing is, there are also some huge societal benefits to this collapsing of time and space. Yes, it allows us to be bigger assholes, if we choose, but also saves lives. And makes sure that you get home with the prosciutto. The same argument is made about every new tech (asshole uses a buggy whip instead of rocks to guide his horse) that brings about societal change. It's the tech/gadget equivalent about whinging about the good old days that never were.

i use tecnology, mr douglas, to listen as many music as i can. that doesn't make me an asshole. i would be, on the other hand, if i was listening full volume in the freaking bus.
technology just gives assholes new ways to annoy.

Can we all stop taking anything Douglas Coupland has to say seriously. Please! Why people are still willing to publish everything that this idiot has to say, especially when it has to do with tech; though his only experience with tech seems to writing Microserfs (a book I will admit to not reading). But I've read his other 2 (Generation X and Girlfriend in a Comma) and he is a hack. He has nothing new to say. OMG, technology is turning people into a-holes! Haven't we been seeing editorials and blogs like this for the past 6-7 years? Who cares? Wake when this jack-ass has something pertinent and timely to say. Though I doubt that day will ever come. Oh, and he's not that good of a writer either. "Girlfriend in a Comma" made me cringe everyother page with characters saying things completely out of character for their personality, age, up-bringing, etc., and was so didactic I felt I was reading an uninteresting version of "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintance."

@worsethannormal:

Oh, and he's not that good of a writer either.

What a jerk...

I think it's more accurate to say that technology gives idiots and assholes more opportunities to be idiots and assholes, and often more visibly. It took me until 2004 to adopt a cellphone, but it's helped me out in tight spots more often than I can count, and I'm not the kind of person who will drive at 80mph while chatting or rudely ignore a cashier because I'm talking to somebody. There are times when it's just necessary to hang up the damn phone and get on with your life.

It's important to evaluate the social and personal effects of new technology, but technology is just a tool; ultimately, only the individual is culpable for whether he acts like a reasonable human being or an idiotic prick.

Also, Coupland's written some decent novels, but he completely lost me after the wankfest of Jpod.

Holy crap what a bunch of zombies. This guy hated people with early cell phones because they could afford it and he couldn't. How do you know someone today isn't taking a call or running their business because they have to? It's like he assumes everyone is on an unimportant call or calling someone to flaunt that they have a cell phone.
If someone is typing on a laptop at a Starbucks, those are assholes. It's pretty easy to assume that nobody is so important that they can't even get a cup of coffee without having to have a laptop to work on.
As the owner of several Internet businesses, you simply have to be able to leave the house and still take calls when grocery shopping or running errands.

This guy is a grade A asshole himself, he assumes everyone he sees is talking on the phone to give him the proverbial finger and flaunt it. I vote he deserves the annual award to be pushed down a flight of stairs. Does anyone second the motion?

@Hello_Newman: no

I don't see it as we're all a**holes. The truth is that what we've deemed socially acceptable has changed from what it was 10 or 15 years ago. Being in touch with our friends and families even when we're doing other things has trumped our aversion to being somewhat less connected with the immediate environment. That's just normal human nature - it's easier to interact with someone or something we are already familiar with(friends, family, or even the cell phone itself) than it is to talk to the stranger in the line at the grocery store.

"lazy sloth" ? this guy 's a writer?