Interesting note from my granddaughter the other night. She wanted to
go to an online school.
Gramma and I told her that would require discipline we were not
certain the 12-year-old possessed, though in a traditional bricks and
mortar school she wins all As and high Bs.
"You'd have to give up your phone," we told her, "to be certain
that when it was school work time, school work is what you're doing."
"I don't want to go then," she said. "I can't live without my phone."
"Why not," I asked.
"I have to be able to text all my friends," she explained. "Texting
is, like, a whole other dimension."
Texting when I'm working is great. If I'm not paying attention to what
you said because I'm doing something else, I can look back and see what
I missed. I can send a message to my son, knowing he'll read it on his
next break.
But allow me to suggest that texting and emailing were not the
demise of phoning. That credit goes to technology that replaced humans
with answering machines and menu systems and call centers that allowed
someone in India to tell us, for less money than a similar person in a
stateside company, that our warranty is expired and here's the number
for Pay for Service.
Texting bothers me some, but mostly because I'm an old fart and I
like my conversation and cussing face to face. When I call the local
school administration or municipal I like to have a person answer the
phone. Alas, many of those systems even refuse to acknowledge a "0"
press before they've forced you to wait through all the possibly
permutations of digital dalliances.
And when you've finally got through to the person you want, it's
voicemail, which tells you nothing of whether the person is even on the
planet this week.
A-r-r-g-h!
On 8/16/2010 12:15 PM, Tony Cooke wrote:
>
> What a pleasant experience to be able to have a joke and some
> common-sense dialogue! I will certainly be dealing with that company
> again.
--
If brute force isn't working, you're not using enough of it.
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