Cell Phones

The first article I chose was Reining in Cell Phone Use" by Derek J. Moore, of The Press Democrat, April 11, 2008. He discusses the false sense of safety people have using hand free options on cell phones while driving, namely blue tooth being potentially the most dangerous of all as there may be latent side effects concerning people's health yet to be discovered. He also suggests that hands free options don't make people better drivers, and that people will continue to be distracted while driving. Oddly enough, the law he discusses in his article does not ban text messaging, which is much more distracting than just talking on the phone.

For my next article, I chose "When Your Brain is Outside Your Car" by Dave Downey, of North County Times, March 31, 2008. The journalist discusses, with confirmation, that talking on the phone while driving is a hazard, regardless of whether you have a hands free option or not. Worst of all, it gives police the authority to pull you over for an incidental occurrence, and proceed how they see fit. Is this America we live in? Or is it some police state in one of Arnold Schwarzenegger's futuristic sci-fi movies?

This next article was very interesting. It is "The Affliction: Technology Created It" by Jose Astorga, blog in Seattle Post Intelligencer.com, April 8, 2008. Not only does he highlight, yet again, the dangers of talking on the phone and driving, but he also brings up a psychological issue he is developing that is manifesting physically, that when he gets hungry his stomach vibrates as his cell phone does. I found this to be humorous and bazaar, however, when I'm watching a movie at home and phones ring on the screen, I oddly enough reach for my phone to see who is calling. Aside from these newfound phantoms our over stressed, over worked, under payed, and under rewarded society is developing, he also mentions the rudeness factor. How it has been adopted that it is OK to interrupt people in conversation when the phone rings, or text message other people while you are speaking to someone in person. Nobody is paying attention to anyone anymore. I wonder what other kinds of psychological drama will unfold as this phenomena of the cell phone continues into the future? Where will we be as people?

This next article seems to answer my previous questions a little bit about where we are heading. It is called "Text Messaging as Toy or Tool" by Naomi S. Baron, of OUP.blog, Oxford University Press, March 25, 2008. She discusses what the youth of the world is doing with this technology that they were born into. So our future as human beings may look to be as though there is a high regard for privacy and personal space, but a want and a need to communicate with others, as long as the communication is one sided. This has a slew of pros and cons. On one hand, you have the comfort and control of privacy. On the other, you have a serious detachment from others, which is socially dangerous. A divided people is much easier to control, and though this technology in my generation has a potential of bringing us closer together and coordinate efforts, if future generations take it for granted it will serve to separate people more, and desensitize them easier. Another interesting thing in this article is since when is spying on your children good parenting? What happened to nurturing and open communication from the start so you've laid the ground work for them to trust you and come to you with their problems or questions? Yes, it is good to know what is going on in their lives, however all you need to do is listen or ask questions like the drug talk, the weapons talk, the who's your enemies talk, and who's your friends talk. It is important to teach children to be self reliant and show them respect so they don't need to rebel. In this regard, maybe cell phones will bring parents and children closer together.

The First Technological Revolution and Its Lessons

This article discusses the social ramifications of moving from either a hunter gatherer society and/or a horticultural society to an agricultural society, and the social ramifications found by moving into a more technological direction. Mankind could not be persuaded, before technology, to follow any kind of leadership because each individual would provide for himself/herself and any surplus would be shared as gifts to others in the tribe as a form of insurance so that if that individual was in need, the rule of reciprocity would prove to be a survival technique. These were the early days when man learned to tame fire. Later, ideas would lead to technological advances, giving man the ability to control water, which meant no longer did mankind have to depend on seasonal rains or careful planning in flood plains to grow crops. Instead, he could become tied to the land and bring the water he needed for his crops, livestock, and his own survival to the land where he needed it. With this technological development, came a great deal of surplus, and the necessity to protect it. Mankind not only became very superstitious around the development of this technology, as they started to pray for the well being of their crops and livestock, for bountiful harvests, and protection from those who would just move in and take it. Eventually and swiftly there was a necessity for a permanent army to protect the surplus, and a form of government to turn to to resolve these problems. This gave rise to the chieftains, where family lines with the notion of direct lineage from the divine moved in and took claim of the land and its people and all that was created of it. Permanent armies could then be established, and the economy could then be controlled by redistributing goods and retaining surplus.
This technological development gave way to this day, our newest form of slavery, where we must work to obtain money to buy food, clothes, and shelter so that we might go back to work and repeat the cycle over and over again, without a true grasp of what it is we are doing. As our technology moves more into information preservation, and we find other societies to provide our food for us, when our economy begins to fail as it is now the division between the haves and the have nots becomes quite apparent. This society, on a world level, is equal to slavery as its construct leaves individuals with nothing of our own for all we've toiled. There's no inheritance for our children as we are taxed excessively. This article highlights an evolutionary process of the social aspects of the cost of technology. What it does not say is that there needs to be revolution to balance out the power from our governments back into the hands of the people to promote a more egalitarian existence, so that we are not ruled by superstition, fear, and financial isolation brought forth by imposed social classes.

Favorite American Vacation Destinations

I watched the Disneyland and the San Diego Exhibit videos, and though it wasn't so much about traveling then, it was watching the videos that allowed me to be a time traveler of sorts, to view through this digital looking glass back in time. Thought it was one sided, whomever put the films together probably anticipated that people in the distant future would look at them and enjoy them. Disneyland offered a fantasy land escape where anything was possible, as they said in the video. The video on San Diego offered a glimpse into more reasonable economic times where fantastic things were built with very little venture capital. The world seemed a lot more pleasant and fair.

Why We Travel

The author brought up a variety of good points about the thrill and endeavors of travel. Traveling teaches us new things about ourselves and other people, allowing us to see and participate, as tourists, cultures different from our own. The experience educates us. A well traveled person is less likely to listen to their government when their government tells them they must go to war with them and fight them while the government demonizes them with propaganda, because a well traveled person may have the memory of the hospitality of those people. Though few tourists probably take the stance of a do it yourself anthropologist, I think that most people come away from the experience of traveling to a far away place with some sense of appreciation. Be it by airplane, train, motor car, or boat, and in some cases in the Midwest flying saucers, the whole experience of getting to a place while traveling is in and of itself and experience within the experience. Visiting people foreign to us stimulates our intellect, and in some cases, allows us to appreciate what we have in our part of the world.

The Tourist

The author discusses another kind of tourist: the kind that is actually interested in the culture and heritage of the place they are visiting, and pursues it with genuine interest, more akin to someone who has been bitten by the travel bug and has an almost addiction to discovering new places and learning new things about peoples and their societies. He also discusses the senselessness of travel packages or visiting the main drags of these tourist destinations as they have the same or very similar venues to what one would find in their own local municipality. Further, he suggests that they are created for the westernized traveler, and have little to do with the way of life of the locals that live in a given area in the majority of the world. Instead, he celebrates a truer traveler and an adventurer and separates this sort of tourist from the common tourists.

The Loss of the Creature

The author discusses how individuals pursue these rich and fulfilling experiences that are prefabricated by other people whom originally had the experience. In an attempt to emulate the original experience, the tourist goes through the motions of showing up at a destination to mindlessly snap a photograph, missing the whole experience other than in hindsight, for the sole purpose of saying look where I was and look what I did, forgetting that the point of experiencing anything whatsoever is to actually experience it and not merely go through the motions for a sense of social validation, proving how horribly shallow and sheep like the compulsive herd mentality of humans in general is: disingenuous, ghastly, offensive, and disgusting. Further, it is a testimony to how people need validation for everything that they do with the photograph, teeshirt, or bumper sticker to serve as witness of their synthesized accomplishment within their almost experience in commercially purchased packages of pseudo reality, the best money could buy, though it would be cheaper to just sit at home on the couch and channel surf the travel channels and record favorite spots in high definition. Just another prepackaged commodity for a TV dinner generation.

Track 3

I chose track 3: home institutionalized: life in nursing and assisted living facilities. In the first article,"Quality of Life in Assisted Living Facilities: Viewpoints of residents", the author offered statistical data that was variable on many fronts, however the most important, I thought, was concerning the correlation between the loss of Independence and the onset of depression, and perhaps the undertone of hopelessness as it was apparent the patrons of the assisted living places became acutely aware that the end of their life was nearing. The first article gives all the baseline data that one could want as far as physical and mental ability versus handicaps and mental degeneration.
The second article, "Half of Nursing Homes Come Up Short; Administrators Say Below-minimum Staffing Levels a Result of Widespread Nursing Shortage", discusses the high turn over rate in nursing homes and assisted living communities, citing that staff just are not dedicated enough. Though I have worked in assisted living and know differently, it is not the dedication of staff, it is generally a scheisty boss that will not pay you enough to make ends meet and cuts costs by getting minimal groceries for patrons, not to mention the staff is not very well screened. So you end up working with some pretty iffy characters in some cases. If they payed better, they'd keep employees, and if they could keep employees they would have ample staff to assist the patrons. These places seem to run like used car lots, where the organization itself tries to pocket as much money as possible while making employees run some gilapi into the ground and taking its patron passengers with it.
The third article was actually an interview called "Assisted Living vs. Nursing Homes", which described that new legislation is mandating that people in assisted living, once they reach a certain level of clinical need,be moved to a nursing home. Though the sentiment of this is well seen, the whole process of moving someone from an assisted living place, where they were told they could live out their life, to a nursing home to die appears to be quite abrasive and offensive, leaving patrons without a sense of security, belonging, or any means of maintaining self esteem. An assisted living environment should not be able to evict any paying patron. After all, it is kind of the unspoken hope of the patrons themselves to be able to live out their lives without the regulations of being bedridden in a nursing home. The point of assisted living places is to be able to preserve that last bit of dignity and self respect of being mostly independent. It seems as though this new piece of legislation in Iowa gives these cash cow businesses an out in their promise spoken to their patrons of being able to live out their lives.
The fourth article, "Personal Routine", discusses the importance of having a personal routine and highlights this phenomena that we all share, but gives one the impression that when we age it becomes more important, the details of this routine. The personal routine is truly a totem of independence. After all, it is a constant in our day to day when day to day can be so unpredictable.
In conclusion, these articles offered an insight into the pros and cons of assisted living and nursing homes, what the differences are, and what the dysfunctions are. They illustrate the problems of under staffing effecting quality of care, which in turn is fraudulent and should be against the law because the patron is not getting what they paid for. It forces people to sacrifice independence against their will, and puts them in a place of having to adapt or face whatever unsaid consequences that one can deduce by giving some thought to what the options may be if we were in a similar predicament. They all reinforce a key piece of advice many of my friends that are up in age liberally relay: never grow old, it's hell growing old.