Phones Here Phones There
July 30th, 2010 by cmhw
I was waiting for the Metro today in Washington DC. It is obvious that practically everyone has a cell phone. What was shocking to me today was the fact that EVERYONE has a cell phone. Waiting for the metro to arrive I counted approximately 100 people. Of those 100 people there were two people who were not using a cell phone. Most were not talking, they appeared to be reading. It really made me think about the world that we live in.
So often we hear people say things like, “People can’t communicate anymore. All they do is stare at their phones. We are losing the human touch. I am not sure that I agree with these people. I don’t think we are losing the human touch. I think that we are gaining efficiency.
See, all of those people were using a typically boring time to do something productive. In turn freeing up another time when they will have the time to talk or interact with someone. The argument then being that they will be in front of a computer screen once they get off of the metro. That aside it is totally amazing the access that people have today that they didn’t have four years ago. We are a much more productive society.
What this really makes me think about is the impact that this technology has on our students today. I imagine that shortly I will have to explain to my students that there was a time when you didn’t have internet on your phone. Similar to the conversations my teachers had with me about not having CDs when they were little. I have many students who are second graders who already have cell phones of their own! When I was in second grade we still only had one phone in our house, and it had a cord! AND, there was no such thing as e-mail on it.
