Tag Archives: WNYC

What’s the Opposite of a Smartphone? 5 Reasons to Stay Stupid

What’s the opposite of a smartphone? My Nokia C2 -1.05, though it does boast a 3.2 mp camera with video and music capabilities.

My Nokia C2 -1.05 In fact, many of the photos on this blog were taken using this trusty tool.

However,  I have decided to succumb and move into the smartworld. First, why did I hold out all these years? And second what’s changed?

Why Not Use a Smartphone?

1. I didn’t need one. It’s hard to believe but some New Yorkers don’t use cell phones at all.  I spend most of my working day – as I am now sitting in front of a computer – so why would I need another computer in my pocket?

2. Having that computer in your pocket or by your head may cause brain cancer- though like plastics – it’s hard to say because everybody is doing it.

3. I didn’t want to pay more for a phone that I wasn’t going to use.

rooster4. On an ideological level I think the smart phone, like the pocket watch in E.P. Thompson’s (1967) classic work serves as another way for our jobs – or the man – to control the worker’s life. As I wrote in a comment last year on the ITP blog:

“According to Thompson (1967) the shift from cock as timepiece to watch as timepiece signified a paradigm shift. Before the cock people told time by the sun. Chaucer’s cock reflects an agricultural modality. Can the current shift from wristwatch to smartphone be interpreted as a harbinger of the Internet revolution?”Christina quickly picked up on this thread writing “… as we consider this shift from watch to smart phone we also consider how this shift functions for Capitalism. Certainly there are implications for blurring the time of the working day. Are there other implications?”

5. And finally, everyone else has a smartphone,  so if  I need one they’re never far away.

What Changed?

1. Though I’m a far cry from self reliant, recently I’ve felt the desire to be in command of my own smartphone. Perhaps, it’s a response to the uncertainty associated with writing one’s dissertation proposal. I don’t know how that will turn out, but I do know that right now it’s 51 degrees in Central Park, I’ve read the Times top ten article titles, and my commute today will take exactly 37 minutes.

2. On a number of occasions I’ve yearned for a smartphone to direct me to the nearest Citi Bike station, or at least a station with working bikes. It’s this on the fly type of adjustment that only a computer in your pocket can provide.

3. Entertainment. I almost always carry a print version of the New Yorker, or The Atlantic in my bag or back pocket. However, I can’t carry the whole paper – or all the articles I’m perusing. One might counter – but you can’t read them all on the go anyway. Instead of reading I occasionally use the headset on my nokia to listen to the radio, but it doesn’t work on the train  and I’m growing tired of NPR – especially during pledge week.

4.  As noted in a previous post, I’ve become more reliant on my google calendar. In the past I used my trusty notebooks to keep track of  daily engagements. However, now that I use my google calendar more often, the process of transferring information from the notebook to the calendar is flawed and has become cumbersome. For example, I might be at a meeting (without my laptop?!) and I want to schedule another meeting – but I don’t have my calendar because google has it. trusty notebooks

5. I want the ability to check my latest email.  If I don’t choose to respond right away I don’t have to – but at least I’ll know what’s ahead. Which leads to a larger existential question – is it better to know about the email lurking in your inbox,  or to live with the possibility that there is a pressing matter at hand that you don’t know about?

 

What do Citi Bike and the NFL have in common?

In Color Me Blue Ephron makes  humorous, poignant and cutting observations about how Citi Bank did quite well for themselves in the Citi Bike deal at the expense of New Yorkers aesthetics and tax dollars.

“For $41 million — what Citibank paid to sponsor the program for five years — our city bikes became Citi Bikes. To make certain you don’t forget this fact, a Citi Bike sign hangs in front of the handlebars, Citi Bike is printed twice on the frame, and a Citi Bike billboard drapes the rear wheel on both sides. The font is the familiar Citibank font and the Citibank signature decoration floats over the “t.” There is no way to see a Citi Bike without thinking Citibank. The 6,000 bikes so far rolled out, of a possible 10,000, and their signs are a Day-Glo cobalt blue that you see on banks. Nobody wears this color. Nobody paints his or her apartment this color. This blue is bank blue”.

I won’t summarize or paste the rest here – but if you missed this piece – here it is.

From city views,to neighborhoods like Greenpoint, to attempts to turn public parks into private stadiums, in the Bloomberg era we might ask, “What’s not for sale?”

Don’t worry New Yorkers we aren’t the only ones subsidizing big business, as Greg Easterbrook points out in a recent Atlantic article on the NFL, the subsidization of major businesses like sports franchises is a national pastime.

Ever wonder where your tax dollars went America? (hint, it’s not just health care)

How the NFL Fleeces Taxpayers

To Give you a taste: Here are the first couple of paragraphs:

“Last year was a busy one for public giveaways to the National Football League. In Virginia, Republican Governor Bob McDonnell, who styles himself as a budget-slashing conservative crusader, took $4 million from taxpayers’ pockets and handed the money to the Washington Redskins, for the team to upgrade a workout facility. Hoping to avoid scrutiny, McDonnell approved the gift while the state legislature was out of session. The Redskins’ owner, Dan Snyder, has a net worth estimated by Forbes at $1 billion. But even billionaires like to receive expensive gifts.

Taxpayers in Hamilton County, Ohio, which includes Cincinnati, were hit with a bill for $26 million in debt service for the stadiums where the NFL’s Bengals and Major League Baseball’s Reds play, plus another $7 million to cover the direct operating costs for the Bengals’ field. Pro-sports subsidies exceeded the $23.6 million that the county cut from health-and-human-services spending in the current two-year budget (and represent a sizable chunk of the $119 million cut from Hamilton County schools). Press materials distributed by the Bengals declare that the team gives back about $1 million annually to Ohio community groups. Sound generous? That’s about 4 percent of the public subsidy the Bengals receive annually from Ohio taxpayers”. 

And this is just the beginning…The article goes on to explain that the NFL is a non-profit and how that happened.

I seriously considered boycotting pro-football,  luckily the Giants and Jets are two of three teams that have paid 3/4’s or more of their stadium capital costs.

At the end of the day, literally, you may find me searching 33rd street for a quicker way home, and scowling in dismay as yet again all the bikes have flown west for the night leaving me to ponder if maybe we could use more bikes?

But seriously, subsidizing millionaires is madness, inequality is bad for everyone – and if you don’t trust me – listen to former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich.

an empty citi bike rack
But wait – you might say- I see that last bike at the end of the rack! Sadly, it’s always out of order.