What do you need?

Discussion in 'Science & Society' started by Rosnet, Jul 8, 2009.

  1. Rosnet Philomorpher Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    681
    I was thinking about all these online services that people use. From email to chat to IM to social networking sites such as MySpace, Facebook, Twitter... Once someone comes up with it, everyone you know is using it. But has anyone ever said to you, "Hey, you know what would be nice? If you had a website where you could put up your pictures and all your personal information and where you could tell everyone what you are doing each minute!"? What would you have said if someone had indeed said that to you? You'd have said that it was the silliest idea as who in their right minds would want to yell out all their private matters to the whole wide world! And yet MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, Orkut, Tagged, Bebo, Friendster, ALL continue to do booming business.

    So what do YOU need? Is there anyone out there who actually wanted any of these things, before they existed? (Besides the people who came up with these, of course). And do you, right now, want anything of the sort that doesn't exist yet? Something that everyone dismisses as silly when you tell them about it?
     
  2. Google AdSense Guest Advertisement



    to hide all adverts.
  3. lmoss Registered Member

    Messages:
    26
    You're absolutely right, I agree with you 100%. Today's technology has become somewhat of a burden, in my opinion. I do not use Facebook or MySpace and I hear now that many employers can search your profiles on these sites and determine whether or not you're a worthy candidate for hire. So what started as careless fun can now come back to haunt you. As far as email and computer, it's all nice but I could honestly live without it. I'm sort of old school in that way... my girls each got a Nintendo DS for their birthdays and a Wii for Christmas, and I limit their play time to just a hour or so per week. My daughter (she's 8) is even talking about getting her own cell phone because some kids in her class have one, and I absolutely refuse. I don't even have a cell phone anymore! I had one for 5 years and hardly ever used it... I got sick of paying the bill for using it just a few hours per month. To me, I need my personal space and I don't need to be tied down to a telephone 24/7. What's with this world today??

    BTW - what is Twitter??

    Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!

     
  4. Google AdSense Guest Advertisement



    to hide all adverts.
  5. cosmictraveler Be kind to yourself always. Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    33,264
    “One of the oldest human needs is having someone to wonder where you are, when you don't come home at night.”

    Margaret Mead


    “All are needed by each one; Nothing is fair or good alone”

    Ralph Waldo Emerson



    We never understand how little we need in this world until we know the loss of it”

    James Matthew Barrie



    “Keep high aspirations, moderate expectations, and small needs”

    William Howard Stein



    “What we need is to use what we have.”

    Susan Sontag
     
  6. Google AdSense Guest Advertisement



    to hide all adverts.
  7. Orleander OH JOY!!!! Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    25,817
    I don't have any of those. I don't even have a cell phone or credit card. So my needs are pretty basic I guess.
     
  8. lmoss Registered Member

    Messages:
    26
    "I don't have any of those. I don't even have a cell phone or credit card. So my needs are pretty basic I guess."

    That's the kind of world we should all live in. I'm so tired of hearing about people and their credit card debt. What do they expect when they use them all the time, and then can't pay them off because they let their spending get out of control?
    And there's nothing more rude than being somewhere and having to hear someone else's cell phone conversation. I work at a credit union and I'll have a member come up and as they're doing their transaction they're chatting away... then act all annoyed because I need to count their cash back or discuss personal account information that they don't want the other person to hear. So rude! And what about those people who chat/text on the phone while driving? What happened to the simplicity of the good ol' days?
     
  9. Dinosaur Rational Skeptic Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    4,885
    What good old days? Perhaps the person who posted this should have mentioned a particular era or decade.
    Are the good old days the time before before we had cars, computers, TV, washing machines, indoor plumbing, and raised our own food?

    Nobody forces a person to use the latest greatest technology, but a lot of it is very handy when you have a use for it.
     
  10. lmoss Registered Member

    Messages:
    26
    What I meant by "the good ol' days" was the time before all of this annoying technology. It seems everywhere you go today, there's someone on their cell phone. No one can get anything accomplished without having a cell phone glued to their ear. And what's with all this texting on cell phones!! It's ridiculous!! A few weeks ago, my family and I were driving on the Hwy. This girl passes us, she's in the fast lane going about 80 mph , and she's TEXTING! I couldn't believe it. The other day this guy going the opposite direction as me was in my lane.... I nearly had to blow my horn because he was coming pretty darn close to hitting me head on... and he was on his cell phone!! It's too much. This stuff needs to stop... the cell phones, people always taking their computers everywhere so they can constantly play on the internet, etc. I'm not saying completely get rid of the technology... but I just wish people would take a little breather from it so the rest of us could live our lives in peace.
     
  11. Diode-Man Awesome User Title Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    1,372
    A home of my own.

    5,000,000 dollars

    and a calculation of phi of about 500,000 place marks.
     
  12. mike47 Banned Banned

    Messages:
    2,117
    We should not blame technology as technology helped humans a lot . We blame ourselves for following the trend with blind eyes . If someone has or does something I am not obliged or obligated to have or do the same !!.
     
  13. Mr. Hamtastic whackawhackado! Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    4,492
    I need a strong general ai to tell me what to do that I might be uploaded into it.
     
  14. Orleander OH JOY!!!! Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    25,817
    Oh, we also don't have caller ID or an answering machine. If people don't get ahold of me, they know they have to keep trying because I will not be getting back to them.
     
  15. lmoss Registered Member

    Messages:
    26

    I have caller ID and it's a joke... half the time the number is "unavailable" or it's displayed incorrectly anyways... I'll call a missed number back and it's either "out of service" or someone who swears they've never called me.
    I have an answering machine too but it's a waste because no one ever leaves messages....they'll just hang up....
    Anymore I just answer... if it's a telemarketer I'll try to switch the conversation to bank products (I'm a teller) or I'll hand the phone to one of my kids... works every time!
     
  16. lmoss Registered Member

    Messages:
    26
    I agree with you on this. I used to have a cell phone... but found that I hardly used it and it was too much of a nuisance so I got rid of it. Some of this stuff is handy and is beneficial when used properly and respectfully.
    The only thing I'm saying here is that the majority of the people here have gone overboard with it. I think there should be laws in all states banning cell phone/texting use while driving. I think it should be common courtesy to turn the phone off when you're shopping or standing in line... in fact, as a teller, I won't even call the next waiting person to my window... I'll motion for the person behind him/her to come up because I get so agitated with them being on the phone. If they're the only one, I'll let them stand in line, by themself, until they end their call. Sometimes they just walk right up anyways though... and I always make a point to count their cash back extra loud or tell them their account is negative....
    As far as the rest of this stuff, the IPODs, video games, portable computers, etc... it's all neat but it's a shame that the majority of people act like they can't live without it. It's like a newly crazed society who are all addicted to this stuff. It's one thing to use this stuff in the privacy of your own home for an hour here or there.... but when you can't live without it to the point you take it with you into everyone else's lives and interfere with the flow of things... that's what I'm referring to.
     
  17. EndLightEnd This too shall pass. Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    1,301
    Most people think they need more then they actually do, especially in America where materialism runs rampant.
     
  18. Doreen Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    4,101
    I don't need it. I use it, but if the whole thing collapsed it would be great. I do not have a cellphone. I do not text message. I do not chat. I do not facebook. I do email and I obviously post here. but I could live without those. I hate all the noise. No one can just sit still anymore. They are with one person texting another. They takl on the phone while chatting with someone else while listening to their ipod with the TV on. We are crisscrossed by so many damn EMF fields and they do in fact change our brain wave patterns that these will surely be the 'duh we didn't realize cigarrettes of the future.'

    I hope everyone uploads themselves soon and goes completely digital and leaves the planet for the rest of us who actually like, well, life.

    To put it as pissy as I feel about it most of the time.

    I need a tribe.

    I need shelter and food and water.

    I need music.

    I need sex.

    I need nature.
     
  19. parmalee peripatetic artisan Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    3,266
    I still rue the mass proliferation of integrated circuits (and in protest, seldom make us of them--except for the seriously old-school ones--in my own creations). And I am not opposed to the use of violence against those who use cell phones in my presence.

    The list above is adequate, though I would revise it for my person:

    I begrudgingly acknowledge the occasional need for a tribe; though I prefer dogs.

    I need a makeshift shelter (not always) and food and water.

    I need music.

    I don't really need sex.

    I need nature.
     
  20. Fraggle Rocker Staff Member

    Messages:
    24,690
    These are all competing technologies. Eventually this will get sorted out and there will be one or two services that everyone uses. Young people love to play around with this stuff so they use it all. So do IT geeks.

    Some bands use MySpace and others use FaceBook because it's a good way to let people hear your music and decide if they want to come to your gigs. They are not equivalent in functionality so, as I said, the market will have to decide which one is better as they both struggle to catch up with each other.

    Twitter is for people who are compulsive chatterers and just want to stay in touch with their friends via 140-character cellphone messages. You all know me, I'm incapable of writing anything less than two pages in length so you can imagine how I feel about "tweeting." My opinion was eloquently stated by one of the characters on "Boondocks": "Nothing worth reading was ever written by a man who was typing with this thumbs."
    I'm the wrong generation to judge that, having once lived in a town with party-line telephones and no TV. But I'm constantly surprised to meet people in their 40s who have not embraced information technology even as thoroughly as I have. My boss won't read a document on her computer screen, she insists on receiving a printout. And there's a whole generation of managers who resist the telecommuting crusade because they can't imagine how to deal with people they can't see.

    People walk into my house and say, "Fraggle, how can you live without a single piece of paper on your desk, only a computer? Oh wait, here's one. But of course, it's your shopping list... Wait, wait... Even this is just an Excel printout!!!" My wife has a Blackberry so she doesn't even need to print her grocery list.

    We're living on the cusp of a Paradigm Shift and we haven't settled on a vision of what the world will be like after the Industrial Era. This is pretty much what life was like at the start of the Industrial Revolution. Six different people invented devices that did the same thing differently, and eventually society decided which was best.

    One of the hallmarks of this era is that people are "migrating" into "virtual communities." They communicate with people electronically, using whichever technology they find the most useful. Isn't that what we're all doing here on SciForums?
    Yeah. I want an analog-to-digital transcriber to convert our library of 2,000 vinyl albums to MP3. And I want it to do a really good job of filtering out the scratches and pops. Oh yeah, and the reason I haven't done this yet is that I don't want to have to spend years sitting next to the turntable, doing it in real time. I want to laser-scan the grooves. That's really not very much to ask and I can't believe it's not available yet.
    I've never adapted to cellphones. For one thing, they're just too small to be convenient for my huge bass guitar-player's hands. I do not like keys the size of sesame seeds that require a magnifying glass and a toothpick to use. Still, even I carry one in my car in case I have to call 911 or just the AAA.

    Last time my car stalled on the freeway I waited fifteen minutes for somebody to stop and let me use THEIR cellphone. Fortunately I was wearing one of my Grateful Dead t-shirts and a family of Deadheads stopped to help.
    How do you get along without credit cards??? Every day it's harder to get somebody to take a check. If you go on a cash basis and don't have an ATM card, you must have to go to the bank twice a week for funds, or else carry a fortune in your purse waiting to be ripped off.
    Well aren't you the social butterfly. I imagine not too many people bother calling you with an attitude like that. Let me take a wild guess: your phone is black, wired into the wall, and has a dial.
     
  21. lmoss Registered Member

    Messages:
    26
    "How do you get along without credit cards??? Every day it's harder to get somebody to take a check. If you go on a cash basis and don't have an ATM card, you must have to go to the bank twice a week for funds, or else carry a fortune in your purse waiting to be ripped off."

    Fraggle... ever stop to think that maybe she doesn't need to spend a lot of money?? I'm a bank teller myself, and I still write checks. I have an ATM card and credit card, and I STILL write checks. It's all you idiots that buy your stuff with your debit/credit cards that make fraud the fastest growing crime.... and I'm not talking about online purchases. Every time you hand someone your debit/credit card, all they have to do is memorize or write down (especially at restaurants, where they walk AWAY with your card) the 16 digits on the card, and on the back there's a 3 digit security number. Once someone has that, that's all they need to go online or purchase something over the phone. I see it happen all of the time... I do an average of 2 dispute forms per week for fraudulent purchases.
     
  22. weed_eater_guy It ain't broke, don't fix it! Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    1,516
    lmoss, I'm kinda surprised by your opinion on debit cards, as you are a teller. I can totally understand someone not needing a credit card, but a debit is extremely useful, and if you manage it right, a responsible way to use checking funds! In a time when many places don't even take checks "from non-local banks", debit's kinda the way to go now.

    Doesn't mean one needs to use it all the time of course. In fact, when I was 18, my mom, a loan manager for a large bank, felt it would be wise for me to have a debit card going to college. The account was open in my name, but it was a college account of some kind where she could monitor it's use, and in theory, bitch me out like there was no tomorrow if the account over-drafted! It wasn't a bad setup really.

    And I feel for you as a teller, you must have a few worst-customer-ever stories I'm guessing, lol.
     
  23. lmoss Registered Member

    Messages:
    26

    I'm not saying that using a debit card is a bad thing. You're right, if you use it wisely it can be a very beneficial tool. It allows you emergency access to your bank account 24/7. BUT, what I'm saying here is that over the last 10 years or so there has been a growing trend of debit card misuse. Almost all bank accounts today offer some sort of overdraft protection. You use your debit card whenever/wherever, even if you don't have the money. Your transaction goes through with a "courtesy" fee, or overdraft fee, of $20 or more. I've seen many many people (especially those in their 20's, 30's) overdraft their accounts to the point of where the account cannot be paid. The account is closed after so many months and sent off for collection. NOT a good thing! Also, people have gotten so used to using plastic that they just hand it over for everything they need to buy. Sure, I use plastic. I'm not saying I don't. My method of payment goes in this order: Cash, Check, Credit Card, then Debit card. Why? Cash is the best way to pay. You're not giving a complete stranger any account information at all. Check is also good. You're still giving away your bank account info (routing number, acct number, your personal signature as well as name, address, etc which can be used for fraud but not as likely). BUT people are more likely to ask for ID with this method, especially if it's a larger purchase. Checks today are often debited from your account by EFT (electronic funds transfer), which means it clears your account right away just like a debit (good if you don't like to wait for checks to clear, bad if you don't yet have the funds and will overdraft).
    Finally, I prefer Credit card over debit cards for this reason: Both cards will have a 16 digit account number on the front along with a security code number on the back (3 digits by the mag strip). Along with expiration date, this is all anyone needs to commit fraud. People should know this, yet they willingly hand over their debit card when they eat out somewhere, and the waiter/waitress comes back 10 minutes later with the bill. A credit card will not affect your bank account, and you have weeks to pay the bill which allows you ample time to review your credit card acct and find fraudulent charges and dispute them. Sure, you can dispute debit transactions, but once they've cleared and cost you lots of fees and possibly cause other things to bounce all together, you've got a huge headache on your hands.
     

Share This Page