TERRE HAUTE, Ind. (AP) — With most students now using cell phones, Indiana State University officials plan to remove telephone service from individual residence hall rooms.
Campus residential life director Rex Kendall says usage of residence hall land lines has plummeted over the past few years as cell phone use has soared nationwide.
Of all the things in my lifetime that we didn't know we couldn't do without until they were invented, the cell phone is still the most amazing to me. The fact that we so blithely accept that a phone number is attached to a person rather than a location is a revolution not just in technology but in thinking as well.
Comments
And yet we live in a town where you can't even take a cell phone (or any other 21st-century electronic device) into the courthouse... unless you're a special class of citizen.
Michaelk42, you don't think ringing cell phones in court would be disruptive? Or the ability to record (audio or video) testimony might be potentially harmful?
I'm talking about banning from the entire courthouse, not the courtroom, for one thing.
The Multnomah County Court House in Oregon has FREE WIFI in the building, for crying out loud.
How on EARTH would recording testimony be harmful? Is what the newspaper whose site your typing on doing harm when they report on that testimony? If that testimony is in open court, it's by default for the public. That's the *entire point* of public trials.
And did you forget that the lawyer/judge/officer class of citizens get to have their electronics in the building and courtroom?
Then again, Fran Gull & company apparently think it's in some way harmful if regular people exercise their rights and... take pictures of people in a public place and - gasp - post them on the internet.
According to her comments, that in itself is somehow the harm they're trying to prevent.
How in God's name did we EVER get by BEFORE the advent of cell phones, anyway?
(musta been a MORE CIVIL time when people practiced something called MANNERS)
It's just the result of too much technology in the hands of folks that have NO idea how to properly conduct themselves.
Yeah, I'm just SO Victorian.
(sue me)
;)
If manners were the only thing that were important, we wouldn't need a First Amendment. "Popular & proper" speech doesn't need protection from suppression.
You also forget that we're not just talking about cell phones. We're talking laptops, smart phones (often computers in their own right), cameras, video... all the technologies of the current day that make information more accessible and people more empowered in general.
That Fran Gull would reserve that power and those rights to her favored class of people is very telling of the sort of person she is.
Maybe people shouldn't be SO entertained by being SO "empowered" (yes, there IS a definite connection there)...hmm?
And maybe I prefer to have judges JUST like Fran Gull tossing the book at perps like those that beat infants, too.
Someone once said that KNOWLEDGE is power...not entertainment.
I'm just sayin'.
Bob, your limited understanding of modern technology as solely being for entertainment is your problem, not everyone else's.
Really, what you're saying doesn't appear to be much... or even on the topic.
He seems to think it's all about ringtones, video games and hip hop downloads.
AJ
Proof POSITIVE that our future is in perilous hands, folks, as evidenced by the "we know it all because we're younger and so damn tech-savvy" crowd...
You must be the people I smack in the back of their head when they talk on a cell phone in a MOVIE THEATER, too.
My understanding of technology is not "on trial" here, but this is what comes when people (like yourselves) who can't make a cogent case FOR themselves...denegrate and brow-beat any opposition.
Ever think of joining the NBPP?
(tell 'em you're albino)
ROFLMAO!
Have a NICE "progressive" day.
:)
Your understanding of technology can't be on trial here, Bob, you don't *have any*.
I'm going to guess you're not familiar with mobile apps and cloud computing, are you?
Welcome to your personal Singularity, Bob.