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But another reason is that "going mobile" has turned out to be the precursor to a surge of restiveness that makes it nearly impossible for some folks to partake in antiquated 20th-century behavior -- like sitting down for a meal in a restaurant. The answer discovered by diners wanting to "keep it moving" seems to be -- you guessed it --mobile food trucks.
Indeed, in 2015 -- largely due to texting and other forms of "instant" messaging (which often results in not-so-instant responses) -- actually talking on a mobile phone seems pre-2007. That's the year Apple unleashed the iPhone and set off a craving for quality simple-mindedness imposed on consumer vanities in the same manner developed to cultivate the public's desire for a certain brand of popcorn -- by being relentlessly hyped as a "smart," new-age necessity.
And so, with Apple's help, while communicating via texting has gone viral, texting is mere sub-text relative to the overall capabilities of any smart phone. The availability of Android and iOS-based apps, which will in some way assist you with virtually any task related to thinking, have made phones the quintessential, right-at-your-fingertips means by which humans micro-manage the conformity or non-conformity of their everyday lives -- with the added bonus of enabling potentially everyone in a two-block radius and beyond know about it in a wide variety of ways. Yesterday's high-volume, in-artful "celly" users have been overwhelmed by the completely wired-in types of today who stumble around -- strapped like some sort of electromagnetic gunslinger -- packing multiple smart phones, an iPad tablet and "smart" watch, "smart" pencil, front and rear Go-Pros, maybe even a laptop.
Certainly everyone has a personal tale to tell about smart-phone zombie-like behavior. Some may recall, for example, the "Fountain Lady" incident involving a woman so immersed in her personal smart-phone funhouse that she wound up also immersed in about a foot and a half of water after falling face-first into a shopping-mall water fountain. Further evidence of a zombie-like state of mind came when she later filed suit seeking monetary damages from the mall for an embarrassing mishap caused by her own smart phone-induced negligence.
Instant gratification
Years ago my mom would sometimes complain that calculators would erode the ability of us young-uns to solve math problems the way her generation had -- by crunching numbers on blackboards, spreadsheets and notebooks. She also lamented that digital clocks would render future generations completely incapable of telling time on a traditional one. Now, several decades later, there are likely tens of millions out there among us whose homes never included a traditional clock among its furnishings.
"Big hand? Little hand? LOL!!! WTF is that?!"
Smart phones are just the latest shortcut on the road to instant gratification. But it's a shortcut that is simultaneously glamorous and treacherous. These relatively small, now-ubiquitous devices, according to one study, are "creating a huge ripple in the pond of human behavior." Renowned English poet Joseph Addison once proclaimed: "One of the most important, but one of the most difficult things for a powerful mind is to be its own master." Taking that into consideration, the notion that smart phones pose a potential challenge to anyone in pursuit of such mastery seems inarguable. It's like, why bother burning brain juice learning how a simple map can help you figure out how to get where you're going, when your smart phone's trusty little MapQuest app will conveniently plot it out for you? Meanwhile, if you're either hungry, lazy, illiterate or all of the above, "tweeting-to-order" at Domino's requires absolutely no ability to spell. Simply fire off an emoji of a pizza and they'll shoot one right over; no wordplay necessary.
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