Smart Phones

SkyzykS · August 15, 2013, 4:19pm

[quote]Hellfrost wrote:

I think it’s more important for someone to be able to find an answer than it is for them to know it. No matter how much you study, you won’t be able to remember everything. Being easily able to find the information you need makes you much more efficient at your job,. [/quote]

I agree with your example, but this concept can start to suck pretty quickly. My wife is part of a management team at work. She is smart, diligent, and willing to do what ever is required of her-including pouring through policy and procedure binders and memos to actually learn the meat and potatoes of her job. On the other hand some of the other people aren’t so diligent. They abide by the “I know where to find it” theory.

You know where they find it? They ask her! Instead of actually taking the time to learn and be able to think on their feet, they interrupt her through out the day to ask some really basic questions. When she doesn’t have the time to “help” it results in them screwing up procedures and costing their company time, money and has on several occasions left them open to liability.

So sure, quick reference is handy, but it doesn’t always trump actual knowledge.

MartyMonster · August 15, 2013, 7:09pm

[quote]csulli wrote:
I’ve got the same phone X. It’s pretty sick. I love how it can detect motion above the screen without even touching it so you can do stuff just by making gestures in the air above the phone that it can track precisely. And the camera(s) are phenominal. The only thing I don’t like is how sometimes when I’m going to sleep at night I can kind of hear it whispering things into my ear about resistance being futile and how I should kill all humans.[/quote]

You know you have a problem when the phone wakes you up in the middle of the night to say ‘Hey buddy, I was having the greatest dream … I think you were in it.’

Of course its really time to panic if it then starts whispering ‘Hey sexy muma, want to come kill all Humans with me’. That would mean its either a pervert or the facial recognition software has completely failed.

four60 · August 15, 2013, 7:20pm

On the Day I was taking my Overseas Physical they told me one of the samples was for DNA record. I knew then In my lifetime I would see my Home/Guns/Car connected to me by DNA…this was 1998 so The Smart Phone was a shock

Professor_X · August 15, 2013, 7:45pm

[quote]four60 wrote:
On the Day I was taking my Overseas Physical they told me one of the samples was for DNA record. I knew then In my lifetime I would see my Home/Guns/Car connected to me by DNA…this was 1998 so The Smart Phone was a shock [/quote]

Funny…when they told me that, all I could think of was some war 500 years from now with 50,000 X clones.

Hellfrost · August 15, 2013, 11:56pm

[quote]Professor X wrote:

[quote]Hellfrost wrote:

[quote]punnyguy wrote:

[quote]Professor X wrote:

20 years from now, your kids won’t actually know anything themselves.

they will just be “plugged in”.[/quote]

Robert Heinlein many, many years ago wrote a great book (or short story, so long ago I can’t remember and I refuse to google it HAH) about a society where every kid got “all” human knowledge downloaded into their brains when they reached a certain age. But certain dumb kids’ brains could not handle the download and had to learn the old fashioned way, one word at a time.

Turns out the “dumb” kids were the only ones with the potential ability to be independent thinkers, and would be depended on to provide whatever innovation might occur in the future…that Heinlein was one prescient dude.

Less and less people actually “think” now, they just know how to “search”. I have a basic dumb phone, and refuse to get a smart phone unless they inevitably become the only option. Off soapbox.[/quote]

Did they have to re-invent the wheel each time too? You must really be afraid of all the information that’s available on the internet. Better go back to sifting through libraries again. oh wait that’s just a slower version of “searching”.
[/quote]

I am guessing you haven’t actually been to too many real libraries.

On some level, you are right, it is a “slower” method of searching.

It also required deeper understanding of the subject to keep searching…which meant the average person doing some real “searching” for a topic in a library would likely be way more informed by the end of it than someone who just types in a sentence on a Google search.

This is about how we as humans will lose the “hardships” that truly helped define some of the greatest minds and accomplishments in human history.

What that means is long term, what we have to look forward to is people who can find anything in a second…but have no real original ideas or individual thought. They will be stagnant.

You will simply be a being that is fed information.

Some people don’t see that as a good thing.[/quote]

Again, that sounds like an individual problem.

Before you can truly think “out of the box” and question how something is done you must have a certain level of mastery of the subject, correct? You would have had to put in a few thousand hours in order to truly understand. Let’s assume a person has a level of mastery in 2 maybe 3 subjects. It would be unreasonable for him to start learning an entire new subject just because he wants to accomplish a small task.

I just remembered a personal example.

A couple of weeks ago I didn’t close the lid properly on my pre-workout supplement. I was watching TV around midnight on the couch and my dog thought it would have been a good idea to consume whatever was left in the container (~15 servings). I did not notice this until about an hour later when he was whining and saw the empty tub in my room. 5 Seconds of freaking out and I jumped on my phone and quickly googled up how to make a dog throw up! Hydrogen Peroxide! Just so happened I had some in my bathroom, started force feeding a few teaspoons until he threw everything up. Then spent the night in the ER.

That quick moment of searching saved my dog’s life.

browndisaster · August 16, 2013, 12:07am