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“When we all have pocket telephones”

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Re: “When we all have pocket telephones”

#151

Post by 1123581321 »

temporallobe wrote: post #149
darkwater wrote: post #9

I think the joke is still good, because it's still a bad manner to have your phone ringing and buzzing in many situations (a concert, at the opera etc). I mean, it's actually an impressive comic, it imagines a possible future tech and correctly identifies some real misuses, 70-80 years before it became reality.

I was just in an awkward social situation the other day where someone left their phone on a table at a party and walked away to do something. Some guy was telling an interesting story and we were all trying to politely listen, but suddenly that phone started ringing at full volume. Everyone just kind of ignored it at first but it kept ringing. I was annoyed and wanted to reach over and mute/end the call, but, you don…

In my circles, you would mute the disruptive call with the side button and tell them, “sorry, your phone was ringing while you were gone and I muted it.” Or just “your phone rang while you were gone.”

Re: “When we all have pocket telephones”

#152

Post by maxbond »

darkwater wrote: post #9

I think the joke is still good, because it's still a bad manner to have your phone ringing and buzzing in many situations (a concert, at the opera etc). I mean, it's actually an impressive comic, it imagines a possible future tech and correctly identifies some real misuses, 70-80 years before it became reality.

"A good science fiction story should be able to predict not the automobile but the traffic jam."

- Frederick Pohl

I've heard this misquoted as, "a good sci-fi predicts the automobile but a great one predicts traffic jams and parking lots," which I also appreciate.

Re: “When we all have pocket telephones”

#153

Post by layman51 »

This comic really reminds me of the pilot episode of the cartoon "A Kitty Bobo". It's the same sort of premise where the main character gets a cell phone before his friends do and he ends up falling into awkward situations even though he thinks it's very cool he has a cell phone now.

Re: “When we all have pocket telephones”

#154

Post by yackback »

nonrandomstring wrote: post #7

Lately, stand-up comedians have been saying they're out of a job, because the absurdity of reality is escaping parody. Nothing stays funny for long, because soon enough it's true, and then banal. In a world where all things are absurd, ipso facto nothing is absurd. An interesting question becomes what remains? What are the solid relations that underpin our humanity? Having a boss that tells you what to do? No, long s…

Simulacra! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simulacra_and_Simulation

Re: “When we all have pocket telephones”

#155

Post by codetrotter »

layman51 wrote: post #153

This comic really reminds me of the pilot episode of the cartoon "A Kitty Bobo". It's the same sort of premise where the main character gets a cell phone before his friends do and he ends up falling into awkward situations even though he thinks it's very cool he has a cell phone now.

Reminds me of one of the pilot episodes of my own life as well :p When I was in elementary school, my father gave me a cell phone so me and him could call each other.

No one else in my class nor in most other classes at school had a phone. So it was kind of cool. But still for many years the only thing I could do with the phone, since no one else had mobile phones yet, was to talk with my father XD It was a blue and black Siemens phone with an antenna. No games, no GPRS/WAP, no nothing other than phone call and SMS ability mainly.

Re: “When we all have pocket telephones”

#156

Post by timonoko »

They are now banning cellphones in schools in Nordic countries. But alas, parents are buying standalone smartwatches for their precious brats.

Which reminds me of me in 1950s. I always tried to get seat by the window where the heat pipes run. My crystal set needed ground wire and the antenna could be hidden by the curtains.

Re: “When we all have pocket telephones”

#157

Post by layer8 »

Nekhrimah wrote: post #147
seydor wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And rotary phones in the matrix. I mean it s not like people don't buy record players. The cities of our future will have payphones out of boredom

But the Matrix was specifically set at the time of "peak human civilization, 1999". I'm starting to wonder if they weren't wrong about that.

They may have predicted Y2K differently. :)

Re: “When we all have pocket telephones”

#158

Post by PuppyTailWags »

nonrandomstring wrote: post #127
PuppyTailWags wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gentle inquiry: Are you a comedian or work in comedy? Can you state a general region of comedy you're familiar with (USA Comedy? UK Comedy?) without doxing yourself? [I'm not, and therefore have no opinion on this, but I wanted to know where you're getting your repository of knowledge of "most comedians" from and how to contextualize your knowledge in this matter. I'm asking in good faith.]

Since you ask in good faith (hard to tell around these parts sometimes); I'm British, middle aged, and yes I have worked in entertainments during my career. So far I have heard (via media interviews or similar) John Cleese, Mark Thomas, Eddie Izzard, Stewart Lee, Frankie Boyle, Charlie Brooker, Chris Morris, Steve Coogan, Ian Hislop, and Armando Iannucci all say approximately the same thing in a more-or-less serious…

Thanks for providing me context. If it helps to display the depth of my ignorance about comedy (thus trying to get more context to the claim) I don't know who any of those names are.

Re: “When we all have pocket telephones”

#159

Post by dotnet00 »

Buttons840 wrote: post #100
WaitWaitWha wrote: post #84

> Now, increasingly, cellphones are * day-to-day life* . Far from the literal “pocket telephones” envisioned a century ago, they’ve worked their way into nearly every aspect of human existence, including those Haselden could never have considered. It is now essential to be considered part of the society, to the point that someone who does not want to or cannot carry a cell phone is sneered at. Anecdotally, I was in t…

I've wondered, as wealth inequality grows, perhaps the poorest among us simple won't have enough money to exchange for goods. "Sorry, you don't have enough money to make a haircut worth my time, but if you let me invade your privacy and show you ads until the end of time, that will be valuable enough to exchange for a haircut. Read and sign this 200 page contract and I'll go get a chair ready." See also essential sof…

But the practical necessity of having a smartphone and some internet access has only resulted in cheaper devices and services that fit the needs of the poor. It was a pretty big thing during Covid lockdowns in rural parts of India for instance, where extremely cheap smartphones and internet access made it possible for some amount of remote education to be pursued entirely remotely.

Re: “When we all have pocket telephones”

#160

Post by nonrandomstring »

PuppyTailWags wrote: post #158
nonrandomstring wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since you ask in good faith (hard to tell around these parts sometimes); I'm British, middle aged, and yes I have worked in entertainments during my career. So far I have heard (via media interviews or similar) John Cleese, Mark Thomas, Eddie Izzard, Stewart Lee, Frankie Boyle, Charlie Brooker, Chris Morris, Steve Coogan, Ian Hislop, and Armando Iannucci all say approximately the same thing in a more-or-less serious…

Thanks for providing me context. If it helps to display the depth of my ignorance about comedy (thus trying to get more context to the claim) I don't know who any of those names are.

Sorry, it's a very parochially British viewpoint. Perhaps where you are there's also the same undercurrent, just not visible in the mainstream. You may have to dig a little.

Cultural malaise often hides beneath the surface. One of the most frightening accounts of this, on a more international stage, is what Slavoj Zizek had to say on it; He said that in the former Yugoslavia, humour kept ethnic tensions at bay. The civil war was foreshadowed by a creeping political correctness and people "not finding things funny anymore".

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