The cell phone thing Part IV: U.S. vs. Europe

Us Americans tend to blindly think that we're always on the technological cutting edge. But we're just fooling ourselves; more and more often, we're getting left behind as other countries adopt more state-of-the-art technology. Case in point: Cell phone usage. (And, yeah, I know it's a bit contradictory to grumble about the overuse of cell phones, and then complain that ours aren't as good everyone else's. The food here is really bad -- and such small portions!)

Here's what I mean. Check out this great Reuters article by David Lawsky (via Yahoo! News) that compares cell phone usage in the U.S. versus that in Western Europe. The Europeans adopted a single system (GSM) that provides continent-wide coverage, complete with text messaging. The U.S. allowed "the market" to decide, resulting in multiple systems from multiple carriers.

(As an aside, "the market" will be the death of us -- literally, in terms of our "market-driven" health care system. Check out the great article in this week's The New Republic about the business of health care. It's something we have to change.)

Back to cell phones, what is the result of these different approaches to the technology? Europeans have better phones and better service, which inspires wider use by more people. Here in the U.S., our service sucks and not every system works everywhere in the country.

There's also a difference in pricing, in that Europeans are charged by the minute but don't pay for calls received; Americans gravitate towards "all you can eat" one-price plans, but have to pay for all calls and messages they receive. This results in different usage patterns, as you might expect; Europeans are freer to give out their mobile numbers, but also tend to talk less.

Anyway, this just one example of how other parts of the world are surpassing the U.S. in terms of technology. But pointing this out tends to invoke the ire of "patriotic" Americans, with their creed of "America, love it or leave it." Here's the deal: If you really love state-of-the-art technology, you can't love America all that much, or all the time. You have to leave the country to get the latest high-tech stuff. So think on that, Joe Sixpack -- or get used to settling for second best.

But that's just my opinion; reasonable minds may disagree.

The cell phone thing Part III: Jammers illegal?

According to this story from ABC News, cell phone jammers are illegal in the United States. Here's the relevant quote:

The devices are illegal in the United States, punishable by an $11,000 fine per day and up to one year in prison. The ban is supported by the influential cell-phone industry.

This is almost as annoying as cell phones themselves. How are we supposed to protect ourselves from all this cell phone yammering if we can't jam the signals? This technology is legal elsewhere in the world; then again, other countries aren't quite as under the thumb of the corporate overlords are we are here in the land of the free.

Here's the story: ABC News: Jammers Offer Solution to Cell Phone Disturbances

Too much Law, too much Order

Seldom do I agree with, let alone read, an article in USA Today, but here's one. In this 2/24/05 article, critic Robert Bianco laments the addition of a fourth show to NBC's Law & Order franchise, and the fact that that particular week the network aired a whopping 12 hours of various L&O programming. (And that didn't include God knows how much more L&O popped up on the various cable networks.) That's a lot of Law & Order, granted, but why would that bother me?

It bothers me because I just started watching the damned show, and I'm obsessively/compulsively trying to get caught up on what I've been missing for the past decade or so. You see, I don't watch much television. Regular television, anyway. Yeah, I thumb through the channels a lot, and have no problem stopping on an interesting documentary on one of the higher-numbered channels or a good movie on TCM, but I really didn't have any "destination" shows that I had to watch -- short of The Daily Show and South Park, that is.

But then, a little over a year ago, I watched an episode of The West Wing. It was a season five episode, which means it wasn't all that good compared to those in earlier seasons, but I didn't know that, and I got hooked. And, being hooked, I had to catch up on the whole thing. Fortunately, Bravo is now all-West Wing, all the time (when they're not showing gay guys playing celebrity poker, that is), so I was to able to get up to speed relatively quickly. (The DVD sets helped, too.) I was only four 22-episode seasons out of date, in that instance.

So now I had a destination show I had to watch. No big deal. One show a week (not counting that Comedy Central stuff), easy enough to schedule things around -- and I had the hard disk recorder as backup, just in case. I could live with that.

Unfortunately, you watch one show, you get sucked into more. The more was an episode of Law & Order: Criminal Intent, you know, the one with the autistic/savantish lead detective guy. Kind of liked it. Decided to watch again the next week. Liked it even more. So now I had a second destination show -- and another one to get caught up on.

The easiest way to catch up on past seasons, of course, is via cable -- USA or TNT or whatever. And, thanks to my hard disk recorder, I just punch in the name, scroll through the available showtimes, and start recording. Except that when I punched in "Law & Order," I didn't just get L&O: CI. No, I also got L&O: SUV and the original L&O, and then last week there's this new one, L&O: Trial by Jury. A couple of hours worth every day, enough to fill up my hard disk in a little over a week. That's just too much Law & Order for my tastes. Plus, it gets confusing; the original L&O apparently changed casts every few seasons, and the cable networks don't seem to run the shows in any set order, so you never know who's going to be onscreen when you tune in. It's all a bit mouch, and a huge demand on my time.

So I think I may have to drop L&O from my recording schedule, or just try to catch the newest shows, as much as that runs against my obsessive/compulsive nature. Or maybe I should just concentrate on L&O: CI, or maybe L&O: SUV, or maybe add the new one, too, since there's no catching up to do, or maybe...

Well, you see my problem. Life was a lot easier when I didn't watch much TV.

The cell phone thing (Part II)

I took my two nephews down to Indiana University on Friday, just to show them around the joint and to get our fill of the world's best pizza. (Mother Bears, in case you're wondering.) The old place still looks and feels like it did when I was there in ancient times, with one notable exception: Every other student walking by had a cell phone glued to his or her ear.

Of course, when I was in college we had to share one corded dial phone between two dorm rooms, so I'm not surprised that technology has advanced. (I also learned computer programming by writing FORTRAN programs on punch cards, but that's another curmudgeonly story...) It wasn't just the ubiquity of the cell phones that startled me, but rather how they affected the student body. When everyone is talking on a cell phone, no one is interacting with each other. The students were walking around (on a beautiful 60-degree spring day, BTW) in their own personal bubbles, seemingly oblivious to all and everything around them. No social interaction at all, none of the guys were checking out the girls (or vice versa), no one even bothered to say hi or howdy do.

What's the point of going to college if you're not going to share the experience? (In fact, it's the shared experiences that make college worthwhile, IMHO...) If all you do is walk around in your own little world, how are you going to expand your world and your worldview to grow as a person? This could be leading to something quite troubling....

The problem with blogs...

Actually, there are several, none of which seem to be affecting their popularity. And I'm not sure why.

The first problem is a practical one. Where does one find time to make daily (or even hourly) posts to one's blog? I see all these wonderful and not-so-wonderful personal blogs online, and they all seem to be relatively fresh and up-to-date. Obviously, many bloggers spend a fair amount of time posting to and managing their blogs. Where do they find the time to do this? Certainly, the average blog post isn't (or isn't often) a lengthy piece of well-thought-out commentary, so I don't imagine the average blogger spending several hours crafting the language and grammar to get it just right. But still, you have to spend a few minutes on each post, and minutes add up. Frankly, I don't have the spare time to carve out a half-hour or more a day to post to this rather anemic blog. Do other bloggers just have more free time on their hands than I do, or do they make the time? Or are they faster writers? (Not bloody likely...) So how -- or, perhaps more importantly, why -- do other bloggers find the time to do this? It perplexes me.

A second problem builds on that "why" question. Why do bloggers blog? And why do others read those blogs? (If, in fact, they do...) The typical blog, of course, is nothing more than a personal diary made public. It's vanity publishing, made easy by 21st-century technology. Does one's every thought warrant public exposure? I think not, not even of my own thoughts. So there's a kind of deluded self-importance mixed up in all this, somehow. It's symptomatic of the creeping me-ness of today's me-dia, where we only read and watch and listen to that narrow blend of ideas and entertainment that cater to our own individual tastes. And what caters more to one's personal tastes than one's personal ramblings, enabled by the blogging phenomenon? All me, all the time... it's a little overwhelming.

The third problem is the old wheat from the chaff thing. With so many blogs cluttering up the blogosphere, how does one sift through and find those few that truly merit attention? Or maybe it doesn't really matter, since we only care about our own blogs -- not about anyone else's. I don't know; I fear missing something important, but I don't really want to wade through the spam-like mass of bloggishness to find it.

Finally (for now, anyway), one has to wonder how long-lasting this whole blog thing will be. Anyone out there old enough to remember the birth of the web (then capitalized, of course), when anyone and everyone had their own personal web page? And anyone know how many of those web pages are still around today? Few, indeed. The novelty wears off quickly; it's one thing to cobble together a web page, another to keep it up-to-date. Perhaps the same thing will happen with blogs. The posts will get fewer over time, and the novelty of the whole thing will diminish. That will solve the quantity problem, no doubt.

But that's just my opinion; reasonable minds may disagree.