Nomophobia

Everyone has it.

Nomophobia - this new term that describes an affliction which ails most of us in this modern age of  the 2000s. "No Mobile Phobia" = Nomophobia - fear of being without your cell phone for a period of time being a few minutes, or an extended period of time due to whatever reason. It causes anxiety and stress in the person. It also might just be even needing the phone, having to check it not out of compulsion/fear/anxiety, but out of habit... 

Friend and you decide to meet. It's been a while. Say "Hi's" walk into restaurant sit down. Look at menu. Talk a bit. Silence. Order food. Talk some more. Then one of the phones buzzes or plays a quirky ring tone. The friend checks their phone. It's taking a minute. So you decide to take your phone out too, and then it become dinner, talking and texting.

Even if the phone was on vibrate, we have the urge to check our phones... maybe if you have kids, or are "On Call" at work, or a loved one is in the ICU. Those are good excuses. But it comes down to respect? Who do we respect more the person infront of us or the person on the other end of the cellphone-3G-Internet - ness (whatever)?

1- Addiction/Habit

My father thinks my sister and I text too often. He is a classic type A personality, Workaholic... so he's always checking his email on his laptop, or on his phone. He reprimands us when checking the phone while driving, or being distracted while driving, but when he drives, he allows himself to check his phone every now and then. So I pointed that out to him, but his excuse to me was he runs a business.

2- Priorities

So when we are with someone do we make them the priority or family who is texting or calling the priority? I think this is a major cultural change happening all over the world and worth thinking about. I dislike texting/emailing when with friends. I realize I disrespect them a lot. And I feel the same when it happened to me. So just like when in a movie, Please silence your cell phones and put them away. Even having it on vibrate is annoying.

3- Dependencies

So I was at a party and my friend forgot someone's name, so he quickly went on to the facebook party invite page on his phone to look up the person's name. What happened to using our God Given Brain and actually using it. Once again it comes down to respect and priority.

Even just simple things like you think you know the fact of a certain thing, and when in a discussion you realize you don't know your facts to the dot. So you look it up on your phone. That's plain laziness.
Do your homework.

4- Wired

Although we enjoy "freedoms" somehow staying connected ALL THE TIME, is a new type of freedom? How do we not get tired of knowing what everyone is doing all the time? Of everyone knowing what we are doing all the time and letting everyone know? I think one day we might realize this prison we created for ourselves and want to break free!

this is how we hang out!

let's stare into our cell phones on this romantic date

ofcourse there's the iphone... also - ibuddy!

 

Smart thing to do?

Anyway I googled "Texting Mania" and so much comes up!


http://www.stickmanweekly.com/Reader2007/reader4554.htm   ---> found this cute article!


Maybe we need a Facebook Rehab, Mobile Rehab and Internet Rehab?!?!?!?

Thoughts?




I know I need to wean  myself off of Facebook and my Smartphone... focus more on me.






Breathe!

Social Networking and Friendship

Social Networking, when the concept first came out... especially via internet, was amazing! We could now find our friends of childhood past at the click of a mouse.

As long as they had internet and access to the website.

Before which Social Networking was an art form, and one had to be typically extroverted to be able to network, collect phone numbers and addresses in a handy little book, and keep in touch via  visits, phone calls, and letters. Yes snail mail and actual voice phone calls. No voicemail. No caller ID.

Can you imagine a world without smart phones, geotagging and facebook?!

It's almost like blasphemous!

God forbid we ever live that age again!


At first I remember connecting with my highschool and childhood friends, everyone was thrilled to find each other.

I recently found myself with over 1000 friends.

People I barely knew commenting on stuff on my facebook wall.

Suddenly it struck me where are my real friends? The one's I see weekly and contact day to day? They are busy living life. So who are these people? Why are they even on my friends list? So future me can contact them at a future date when I am in need?
But if they are commenting the comments right now, and I really am not close to them now, will I want to hang out with them? I think not. Why did I add the annoying girl from highschool? Why did i add the stalker boy from college? Why am I still friends with my ex? and my ex's best friend?

If we were meant to be friends it will happen on its own.

Another scenario: I need to contact friend who lives in California because I want to catch up with an old high school friend. I try desperately to contact her on Facebook, the email listed on her FB and her cell listed there. All to no avail. All this over a couple of months. Yeah I am a fool.

Fool me once shame on you. Fool me twice shame on me.

I decided to do some weeding. Yes I took out the weeds, and am still doing so.

Facebook feed, facebook ticker, privacy settings... for 1000+ people?

I just want my good friends to be in touch with me NOW. Future me can fend for herself.
Past me needs to leave the childhood, and highschool stuff behind.


Present Me is happy for the people in my life now, and for the ones in the past and the ones to be there in the future... but I don't need to label everyone, and I don't need to "friend" everyone.

What has Facebook done to the term "Friend"?

This is an email I sent out to my nearest and dearest, when I got so frustrated with trying to track people down, despite "facebook", "geotagging" and the rest of the social networking mumbojumbo.

so lately realizing that the term "friend" is so watered down.
thanks to Facebook especially.
when you "friend" someone you are just collecting a person.
how many of those people are "friends". does being a good friend matter?
what does "friend" even mean?
it's either very simple or very complicated... however everyone has their own definitions now.
own rating systems... so how do you even know where you stand?
I found it tough to keep in touch even with social networking and thus no use for adding people or even trying.
what happened to "let bygones be bygones" I found my self still holding on. Is this healthy?

Just had these random questions recently and was wondering what you thought and/or experienced.

I have friends who will be my friends even though we haven't talked in years and I know they are my friends despite time and space.
I know they will reply to my email/text/call back eventually.
We know how to each other that intimately.

I have acquiantances who I talk to everyday might hang out with, but does that make them my "friend"? Privy to my life details? Must we categorize all the people in our lives in a filing cabinet?

Am I over analyzing?

The School KFI (I was lucky to have gone to a school founded and based on the philosophies of J. Krishnamurti - Indian philosopher. Please look him up if you have never heard of him) taught me to question, so I am questioning! Or is this a totally wrong approach? :-P

I guess ultimately my question is: Dear friend! if I am to reach you what is the best method?
phone? text? email? letter? facebook? twitter? Honestly tell me so I don't get frustrated and give up on our friendship (if it even exists) due to waiting for a reply from the wrong mode of communication!

Funny because my friend finally got a texting plan and an iphone... I had no idea! But phonecalls just work way better between us. However I can still text her!

I have another friend who texts, but she often keeps her phone in her bag and doesn't hear it. :-P Annoying but we learn to live with it. These devices, connections have helped us make life so much more convenient, at the same time annoying for those who don't succumb to the culture of it all.

Then again meetup helped me find the awesomest group of climbing friends in the world!They reply to my texts/ calls and put up with my autocorrect issues!

I don't know... we are at a strange time in the world.

What are your thoughts on this issue? I am so open to hearing ideas, opinions, solutions...



Breathe!!!!

Becks

Shelbs

Manders

Alice

My friends from climbing!

Ry

The Droid in our Lives

I once wrote an essay of how "the time they are a changing", and now i really do feel the full effect of that statement. I began a new job, and with a new job comes $$$!  So i bought myself an early Holiday Season gift: the Droid X!So I have always been jipped on the technology front because the thought used to be that only the business man/ important person should receive/need/ use technologically advanced, and expensive items. However as technology becomes more affordable, everyone can get a cell phone, and not just any cell phone, but a smart phone, or an ipad. These aren't just normal electronics; these devices have changed our day to day lives.

Remember when there were only land lines through one and only one telephone company? Now we have more than one option, plus cell phones. So people can reach us anytime, anywhere. However, we have caller ID so we can easily screen our calls, so people really can't reach us anytime, anywhere. Irony! Now there is texting; Texting is preferred over phone calls because its quiet, less invasive to the person being contacted's life. We can do away without all the small talk, and get to the point, or we can have entire conversations with text messaging. It's quick and easy. Then there is picture and video messaging... the list goes on.

With smart phones we can now download apps, short for application. "There's an app for that too"; that advertisement really hits the spot, because there is an app for everything that you could download for you phone. It's almost ridiculous.

My droid has changed my life, because instead of spending hours checking email and replying at the end of the day, I can reply ASAP. Facebook, twitter, gmail, gchat, skype, all my networking is on there. My finances, my calender, my netflix list, the list goes on. My life is now dependent on this pretty big, but small computer. My parent's joke that I went from being addicted to my laptop to a smaller computer, before which it was a desktop. Plus side of it all, I can send email, and communicate from dance class, from the gym, and right before I go to bed, I can listen to music on my phone, and take HD video too. My cell phone camera is WOW! (check out my youtube channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/pree1403?feature=mhum hopefully that is it).

Hope I'm doing a good job selling Droid/Android, they are paying me to do so. Just kidding; but they should, because I would recommend it to people who network a lot, and rely on their email, phone, text etc. to keep up with their day to day lives. Here's an example sometime the email reminder for dance class doesn't go out till the afternoon of. Working the hours I work, sometimes I don't have access to email right after work, and commuting 30 miles only to drive back for dance class is not conducive to keeping the carbon footprint down.
With the droid I get a flash reminder "email from Aya for dance class". I can also send out emails to my friends while planning my calender out. It is automatic, so every one who is invited gets the event reminder. Google Calender?

Did I mention the swype? It is an awesome was to type. I will suggest go to your nearest droid person and try it. I love touch screens.

Time to get back to my droid now.

See you later, maybe from my droid!

 

I forgot to mention: the droid and the pandora ap, make work somuch more bearable! (unless they play weird songs on the wrong channels! Example 3 doors down and aerosmith on my pop music channel. When I mean pop, I mean Backstreet Boys, Spice Girls type.)

My next blog shall be a blog about music!