Help! The public sphere is being flooded with TV screens that are drowning out everything else. They show up everywhere, obtrusive, and unavoidable.
They demand attention; trying to block them out and do something else can be mentally exhausting. Whether they are large or small, whether they broadcast a public station or a closed circuit network, their continuous distraction of moving images and background noise discourages people from interacting, reading, writing, or just sitting quietly and thinking. I really dislike it. Skip the life preserver and someone please throw me a remote! Continue reading →
Facebook is the new medium for chain letters. You remember the old chain letters, don’t you? You sent something (a dollar, a recipe, a prayer) to the last person on the list, added your name to the top of the list, and then sent copies of the letter to three other people. These always came with a promise and a threat. If no one broke the chain everyone would reap great rewards, but whoever broke the chain would get untold bad luck. Detailed examples were provided for both. I never played along. I either tried to graciously return the letter to whoever gave it to me or just threw it out as an annoyance. And now, I received the Facebook Gratitude Chain Letter!
AutoCorrect, love it or hate it? This week, the New York Times Magazine had a short feature about it. Me, I mostly love it. I am a lousy, self-taught typist. I went to high school in the “olden days” when men were men and women were girls. Only the students in the secretarial track took typing classes. I wasn’t one of them.
I truly love AutoCorrect when I am typing something on a full computer keyboard and it fixes all the common typos for me; “teh” automatically becomes “the”, and “studnet” is transformed into “student” before I realize my mistakes. A god-send! On more complicated choices, some programs flag the suspect word and let me choose the correct spelling. Wow, even better!
But when I am texting, this exuberant love diminishes. I make more mistakes texting because the virtual keyboard is small and my fingers often miss the key, and because I text while distracted — cooking, on line in the grocery store, in the car (but only while stopped). I also use acronyms and texting abbreviations, which aren’t always recognized. Unless I intervene, the correction provided in a pop-up balloon is not a suggestion but the actual replacement. I often miss the opportunity to stop it and touch “Send” too soon. The results varies from helpful, to confusing, to hilarious. Sound familiar? Continue reading →
accidental goddess 