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The Backseat Driver Moves to the Front

You may have been privileged enough to drive around in the car with some that insisted on telling you which route is the fastest, which street you should turn on and even remind you that you have arrived at your destination. Now, you can be in the car, completely alone, and still hear the voice of that backseat driver thanks to GPS programs through your phone and vehicle.

A map application can take you from your current location to any destination that you are headed towards, whether it be down the street or across the country. Get direction for driving your own vehicle, riding the bus, riding a bike or walking. If there is a place you need to go, the phone will be able to get you there.

On a positive note, routes are frequently updates, so the chances of getting lost are less than when you ask a friend to tell you where to go. In addition, the phone will give you an approximate number of miles that you will travel as well as an estimated time of arrival. This takes into consideration the traffic that you may run into.

On the downside, if there is no phone service, there is no GPS. It may not be able to located you or be able to show you a map of where you are headed. This can be especially frustrating because most of the time being in the middle of nowhere is an ideal time to have someone or something to provide you with directions back to the rest of civilization.

The convenience is immeasurable as a map is just a button or touch screen away. While it may at times seem like you still have a backseat driver traveling with you, at least this one comes with a mute button.

Filed Under: Advancements, Gadgets Tagged With: ,

Should There be a 12 Step Program for Farmville?

One of the few things which people will occasionally use their computers for anymore is the playing of Facebook games, especially Farmville. If you have never heard of Farmville before, you must be living a very sheltered life under that massive hunk of granite. But in the world of us Sun-dwellers, Farmville is a criminally addictive game which causes people who have way too much free time to suddenly find themselves in charge of running a farm in a fictitious town (and you get three guesses what that town’s name is). With Facebook being all about being social (minus the irritating detail of actually interacting with people in a face to face context), part of your objective is to trade with and help out your friends.

The trouble with games like Farmville is that, though they are harmless in and of themselves (they don’t cost anything, and no one has ever been known to have died as a result of too much online farming), they can be a significant distraction from living a real life. Just like everything else online, people receive chemical rewards that were initially designed to reward completely different behaviors than we currently use in these types of contexts, which can lead to a highly falsified sense of having achieved something in this virtual world. This is most definitely not a good thing.

However, should there really be an FA (Farmville Anonymous) organization, with a purpose along the lines of helping people to grow real crops, and raise real animals… and talk to their friends in person? Well, that last part may just be going a little too crazy. It is best to start with baby steps, and slowly nudge one’s way from one extreme toward its opposite end. Avoiding relapses is the key, followed of course by living a more constructive life. But then again, there sure are a lot of Facebook games- how could anybody escape from all of them?

Filed Under: Advancements, Technology Tagged With: , , ,

Your Smart Phone and Your Mind

A long time ago, there was a Native American tribe which was nearly dead, and had but one remaining member left in the world. This member was able to recite all sorts of old stories, including songs which were as long as the Iliad or the Odyssey. The really crazy part was, he could do all of this through nothing more than his own memory. Inside his head was the stored wisdom of an entire civilization which had fallen, for reasons which may forever be lost to history. But a funny thing happened when this tribesman was taught how to read and write by a meddling white man- he lost the ability to recite the long poetry and stories from his memory.

It has been suggested that there is something about being able to record the contents of one’s mind which saps a person’s memory retention. Whether this is psychosomatic or whether it has a genuine physical element to it is up to researchers to ultimately decide. But what that means for most of us is that our dependence on technology could actually be hurting our minds. COnsider the effect that are experienced when a person goes from having their to do list in their minds (or on a nice, old fashioned piece of paper) to storing their entire life inside their smart phone.

There are actually a reasonable number of individuals who could not function without the planning features which are present in their smart phones. While these individuals would seem not to be the majority as of yet, their presence is unnerving. After all, what happens when technology fails us, and we have to go back to resorting to the means our ancestors had to apply? In times of great need, we often have to do things we have never done before, with a steep learning curve. What happens to our society if our ability to organize has been lost to the phones?

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Games and Happiness

Awhile back, some researchers discovered that playing video games makes people feel happier than they would have otherwise. While it might bear mentioning that researchers are often paid to study things which would be described by most people as being on the “duh level,” the fact that the medical and scientific communities are finally understanding the positive impact of video games does say something about our society. And for once, it says something slightly positive. Consider the fact that people play video games every day, often while they wait for (and occasionally while they wait for the end of) meetings to take place, and it starts to become fairly obvious that playing video games is a way that people use to make themselves feel better in life.

Think about how most video games are set up. First, they ease you into a situation which could be considered mildly challenging. Then, as you progress further and further into the game, you find more and more challenges to test your growing skills. Many people just play until it gets difficult, and then they pop in something easier- since it’s only a game, there is no penalty for never finishing it, and the reward for playing for hours on end just to hit the limits of your skills is needless, fruitless frustration. So why knock yourself out?

A video game allows the person who plays it to feel good right now, as opposed to the delayed gratification that we all experience in our real lives. Even if you work a job where they pay you every week, you generally have to wait awhile to get that wonderful paycheck (even if it isn’t all that wonderful at all). But when you play a video game, you don’t have to wait at all to see your character kicking butt, taking names and getting the girl. As soon as you finish a level, you get rewarded- the ultimate in immediate gratification.

Filed Under: Advancements, Technology Tagged With: , ,

What is the Real Advantage to Smart Phones?

We live in a world of smart things. We have computers that can monitor what we like, smart bombs that know their targets (which is kind of scary, when you think about it), and even our phones are supposed to be geniuses all of a sudden. But when it comes right down to it, what is the advantage we are supposed to garner from having wise acre phones, anyway? Are we supposed to test ourselves in steel cage chess against them, or something? Or perhaps our phones are a part of some dark illuminati plot to overthrow the world, by slowly sapping our ability to plan our own lives and interact with actual people? Yeah, a theory like that would make a lovely novel, wouldn’t it?

Meanwhile, back in the world where we have taken our anti-psychotic meds, phones are smart for reasons which can hardly be described as nefarious in nature. For one thing, the phones which we call smart really aren’t. They have fast processors, it’s true. And they have lots of storage space (often more than a high end desktop computer from only ten years ago would have had). These could both theoretically be considered to be “smart” characteristics, if they (like the scarecrow) only had a brain. This goes into consciousness theory, which we don’t need to delve into here.

But suffice it to say, a phone that does not realize how much it rules your very life can never truly be called smart. We call these devices “smart phones” because they let us act as if we were smarter than we know we really are. Herein lies their advantage over those dumb old phones we used to carry. There is pretty much no excuse to ever miss or forget about a special occasion. And we can now communicate better than any prior generation has been able to before us. What if Albert Einstein had had access to a smart phone?

Filed Under: Advancements, Gadgets Tagged With: , ,
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