Thursday, March 3, 2005

Calling Paris

  So last week Paris Hilton’s Sidekick was hacked, and the contact information for dozens of celebrities spilt across the World Wide Web like Tara Reid’s fourteenth banana daiquiri on P. Diddy’s chinchilla rug.  Jay-Z, Ashley Olsen, Eminem, Lindsay Lohan, Russell Simmons, Fred Durst, Christina Aguilera, Ashlee Simpson, Usher—they’re all there. 

  This prompted a clever tee-shirt manufacturer to start printing shirts that read “Paris Made Me Change My Number.”  You can expect to see these on the back of your favorite celebrity soon.  It’s sure to be the hot Spring look.

  But this “number-spill” raises some societal issues, as well. 

  • If they can get into our cell phones and raid our address books, what else can they get to?  We are constantly warned about identity-theft, and last week’s gag on Paris should make us think twice about how we handle our own affairs. 

    Now, I’m not one of those techno-paranoiacs who thinks that Big Brother (or worse) is always watching.  In fact, I’m probably a little naïve.  But, in today’s technology-driven world, it’s wise to be cautious.  It’s a madhouse out there; information flows freely, and punishment for the bad guys isn’t as stiff as it should be.  It’s just something to think about.

  • The larger issue, though, is that we rely so heavily on digital address books in cell phones, Sidekicks, Blackberries and PDA’s.  Many of us are lost without them.

    For example—and this is horrible—I don’t know my mother’s phone number.  It’s in my cell phone, not in my head. I don’t know the phone numbers of my best friend, my barber, my favorite restaurant.  Nor have I memorized the phone numbers of my doctor, my mechanic, my insurance agent or my favorite movie theater.  The only phone numbers that I have committed to memory are the ones I dialed frequently before I got a cell phone.

    Fifteen or twenty years ago, that would be a different story altogether.  Most of us would know these frequently-dialed numbers.  They are our connection to the rest of the world, to our inner-circle.  But, as a culture, we have become so reliant on having them at our fingertips that we fail to commit them to memory.  As a result, our memory suffers. 

    With the constant barrage of entertainment and information, we have become a generation of feeble-minded couch-potatoes with attention-deficit problems.  We record shows on our TiVo so we can skip the commercials.  We watch one show while we record another.  We surf the internet with three or four browsers open at the same time.  We use three-way and conference calling so that we can talk to everyone we know at the same time.  We multi-task at work.  We multi-task at home.  We multi-task for fun. 

  This weekend, turn off your cell phone and try to enjoy doing one thing at a time.  And when you’re done, sit down with a phone book and memorize some phone numbers you need to know.  Start with your mom.

-From Pulse
  March 3, 2005

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