Well, I guess our only choice is to own an expensive corporate surveillance device. There's no other option. The ancient polynesians managed to learn to navigate huge, open seas by memorizing the stars. The ancient Greeks managed to measure the size of the sun with trigonometry and grit alone. We've mapped the genome and soon we may even cure inherited illnesses, or bring extinct species back to live.
But I hear you. What if I wanted to know what movies were playing, but I was already at a restaurant? What could I possibly do? The only answer is a smart phone. There's no choice, and no escape.
> What if I wanted to know what movies were playing, but I was already at a restaurant? What could I possibly do?
Do you actually have a solution here or what?
Call the theater? Do you have their phone number memorized? Phone Books and Pay Phones basically don't exist anymore, remember.
Do you just drive to the theater after the meal and check in person? Who is going to agree to that anymore? People will just say "nah maybe next time" and go home
Like it or not, society has changed. Social expectations have changed.
I'm just so frustrated by how quickly and easily people give in to these things. People face relatively small inconveniences and quickly give away their rights. Smart phones and social media (in large part, enabled by always-on, always-present smart phones) have so, so many negatives effects and people won't even consider moving on. "It's hard to find parking" or "some restaurants are now inconvenient to eat at" are measured next to "the suicide rate of teen girls is spiking" and "we've enabled government tracking and surveillance on a scale never before thought possible." I don't know how else to be. People are so obsessed with immediate impulse satisfaction and immediate comfort that they'd give up anything. I think if you offered to remove someone's right to vote, but told them they would be able to gamble for free once a month you'd lose half the votes in the country.
That’s a good clarification, thanks for writing it. I think you and the uncle post by bluefirebrand are both right: the social expectations are different enough now that there really might not be a practical alternative for most people to the corporate surveillance pocket computer—and you’re not wrong that the shift in values and priorities that indicates is pretty scary and grim.
the problem is not the people who want impulse satisfaction, comfort, and convenience - these are all perfectly normal human desires. the problem is that we as a society have allowed predators to tie these needs to surveillance and addiction engineering. there is no intrinsic reason that couldn't have been regulated against - look at some of the absolutely idiotic things the government is willing to spend time and money in micromanaging.
Oh man, the past was fucking wild, because you would do this. You'd just show up to the theater and look at what was playing. Or, if you were close to a store, you'd go and buy a newspaper that had the movie listings for your local theaters.
I can relate. For a brief, shining month, I worked at Tower Records, and one of the duties when we closed was to get on the PA (through the phone system) and make the announcements about the store closing.
Now these announcements were supposed to be brief and structured, but when they permitted me to make them, I couldn't resist cracking up and laughing for some reason, in the middle of recitation, and so never mastered the art of making the announcements for the store. Pretty sad.
But I do recall those days, when movie theaters had all their showtimes on tape. I know that the movie theater is a place that we would never expect to reach a human on the phone. Because that announcement would play, for as long as it needed at a multiplex, and then repeat or cut off. And you were supposed to figure out the showtimes by picking through the linear verbal announcement and choosing your favorite film. I can only imagine the teenage staff who are mostly paid in concessions, how they would get to recording that stuff!
It can be it's own "adventure" just to go to the movies and pick something that's playing. You can end up seeing a movie you wouldn't have because you didn't spend 20 minutes reading the negative reviews of and it turns out to be fun.
I discovered a lot of new things by being forced to make choices from limited set of options.
Strangely, not everyone is at home when they decide to go to the movies.