“Are you a communist?"
“No I am an anti-fascist”
“For a long time?”
"Since I have understood fascism.”
From " For Whom the Bell Tolls ", by Ernest Hemingway, 1940
[image]
(Woody Guthrie)
fascism noun, often capitalized
fas·cism | \ ˈfa-ˌshi-zəm \
Kids Definition of fascism
: a political system headed by a dictator in which the government controls business and labor and opposition is not permitted
If you look up the definition of the word ‘fascism’, you’ll see a lot of smoke blowing. It’s the “cuttlefish spewing out ink” spoken of by George Orwell. Merriam-Webster’s kids definition was the best one! Except it doesn’t mention anything about how, regardless of the nation, the dictator must be descended from a single and most-ancient bloodline.
But this article isn’t about politics, it’s about technology .
Forbes Magazine just published their 2020 “Tech Predictions For The Future of Smartphones”. Check out what’s first on the list:
- The Return Of The Flip Phone
“There are rumors that Motorola has a new flip phone in the works and other companies could follow suit.”
That article is from a month or so ago. The author from Forbes is shilling for Motorola, trying to keep you from remembering that you can go get a pre-paid burner for a hundred bucks from the dudes outside the subway station. At a corporate level, Forbes is trying to prop up Motorola’s last-ditch effort to run a bait-and-switch game on the rubes with a $1,500 Death-energy-enabled " foldable phone". Which effort has failed:
February 10, 2020 - Razr burn: Motorola needs to flip back after its flawed brand reboot
This ‘flawed razor reboot’ hit piece was published less than two weeks after the Forbes article described a new flip phone “in the works” at Motorola, yet the author from Forbes was brazen enough to play it like they didn’t know that the new Razr had already been released, and had already failed.
Not that such deceptions ever help them very much. For example, it’s March 2020, and the populace has recognized that technology has been weaponized against it.
And the folks in charge are having to straighten their ties and aver, with straight faces, that they only just now recognized how harmful technology is. As you can see in a current news story below from just last month, from the Canadian Medical Association Journal. That article is headlined “Excess smartphone, social media use linked to mental distress, suicide risk .”
Oh, those crazy conspiracy theorists at the Canadian Medical Association.
Actually, they are highly influential Establishment talking heads. They are generational Satanists in positions of major influence, suddenly engaged in a desperate rearguard action to preserve the illusion that it’s merely smartphone and social media use which cause you to go bad in the head and want to end it all. Versus the truth, that it is any time spent online, whatsoever, in any way, on any device, doing any thing .
That is including the evil little screen (that you can’t turn off) that’s at skull-level on the gas pump. And also including the customer service person on their computer at the airline counter. And certainly including the IT Recruiter who searches LinkedIn all day long (that would be me). Two name only three of billions of variants.
Most cheeringly, my fringe platform has almost instantly become mainstream…an article below from the U.K. from just three months ago is headlined: " The smartphone is our era’s cigarette – and just as hard to quit ."
And check out the subhead: “This single piece of technology has obliterated the promise of the internet and corrupted human interaction.”
I must say, my material seems a bit tame by comparison. Although I think I must still have the edge on them with " literally blood-drinking Illuminists ."
But, wait. Did you see how he used “this single piece of technology”? Did you see how he isolated "the smartphone " in his hue and cry? That’s because, just like the previous author, he’s also trying to pin the blame merely on the smug phone, and let the real perpetrator, the deadly Internet that drives the phone, walk free.
Check out the last line of the current story below on the collapse of the new Razr:
“But the Razr brand could become an asset even as its latest comeback folds.”
These guys are so obvious. I’m calling it - once the smartphone market collapses in a rush, and the avalanche back to flip phones starts, they’re going to re, re-launch the Razr as a “dumb” flip phone, and own that market space once again.
Because they’ve got to go along to get along.
Jeff Miller, Brooklyn, New York, March 5, 2020
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April 21, 2019 - Japan - Flip phone popularity remains unbowed in smartphone era Japan
Since the shop opened in November 2017, the number of flip devices it sells has steadily increased.
(They shifted from " flip phone " in the headline to "flip devices " in the subhead so the subject would be that much less searchable. No quit in them. - ed)
Men in their 40s and 50s make up the majority of flip phone re-adopters. Many buy them for work and their children – the latter because they serve as a less problematic alternative to giving them a smartphone as a contact unit. Men in their 20s and 30s are also increasingly using the devices as a complementary handset to their smartphones.
April 26, 2019 - The flip phone is back . Have people had enough of constant connection ?
September 12, 2019 - Are you in a toxic love affair with your smartphone ?
At last count, there are more than 3 billion smartphones in use. … Estimates vary, but at least half of all smartphone users or 1.5 billion people may be addicted to their devices
December 23, 2019 - U.K. - The smartphone is our era’s cigarette – and just as hard to quit
This single piece of technology has obliterated the promise of the internet and corrupted human interaction
By now, you know what the smartphone has wrought. You are alive, after all. You are probably reading this article on one. Few technologies have so rapidly consumed every demographic, every age, every cultural and sociological setting, urban and rural, rich and poor. In the late 2000s, we allowed a few corporations to persuade us that this advanced, alien technology – assembled via de facto slave labor in Asia – was essential to human existence. We readily bought in, condensing our lives behind the sleek glass. The scroll hooked us like a drug, triggering the exact right loci in our brains; suddenly, we could never be bored again, doped by endless Facebook and Instagram feeds, retreating from unnecessary conversation or thought into an infinity of trivia. The internet never left us.
(They’re playing to blame it on the so-called “Smart” phone, while saving the Internet. - ed)
December 31, 2019 - , Smartphone Screens May Contaminate Home With Potentially Toxic Chemicals
Liquid crystal devices, such as smartphones, televisions, and tablet computers, have become integral tools of modern society; however, people do not know the environmental effects of liquid crystal monomers (LCMs). An international team of researchers has found that smartphone, television and computer screens may be contaminating your home with potentially toxic chemicals.
Sounding the alarm, the researchers found potentially harmful chemicals called liquid crystal monomers used to manufacture screens for devices like smartphones and TVs in nearly half of dozens of samples of household dust they collected. The findings of the study have been published this month in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. " They’re supposedly sealed in the screens when they’re made, but obviously they do come out ," said Prof. John Giesy, a Canada Research Chair in Environmental Toxicology at the University of Saskatchewan. “The fact that we found them in people’s homes indicates that they are being released during the use of the products.”
2020 - Switching to a flip phone cold-turkey for 2020 : nosurf - Reddit
Part of my new years resolution is to be a more focused individual in 2020. There are so many things I used to love doing , like reading, watching movies, and playing/writing music. I am also in school which is a lot of work.
Unfortunately, more often than not I find myself doing nothing productive with my time, and instead I spend a bunch of time aimlessly scrolling through reddit or other websites. Youtube is a big one too.
It would even cut into my sleep time, since I would just lay in bed on my phone instead of going to sleep.
As such I’ve challenged myself to take a break from all of it for a year. I am deactivating all of my social media (going to keep my reddit account, but stay off for a year), and I am buying a flip phone that can just call and receive texts.
I know it’s going to be really tough at first, and I intend to still use the internet for things like like finding directions or watching movies. But in terms of time-wasters like social-media it’s time to stop. I’m really excited to start this experiment and become more well-rounded as a person.
January 29, 2020 - Nine Tech Experts Share Their Predictions For The Future Of Smartphones - Forbes
1. The Return Of The Flip Phone
While many people want bigger smartphones with full screens, there are a lot of people looking for smaller smartphones and a bit of nostalgia too . So, in the next few years , expect the return of the flip phone. There are rumors that Motorola has a new flip phone in the works and other companies could follow suit.
February 10, 2020 - Razr burn: Motorola needs to flip back after its flawed brand reboot
The modern incarnation of the seminal flip phone makes too many compromises in the name of nostalgia . But the Razr brand could become an asset even as its latest comeback folds .
(Wow - this is a tell…I’m calling it. Once the avalanche of conversion back to old-school starts, they’re going to re, re-release the Razr as “dumb” flip phone. - ed)
February 10, 2020 - Excess smartphone, social media use linked to mental distress, suicide risk : Study: 54 per cent of US teens think they spend too much time on their smartphones
Excessive use of smartphones and social media may be associated with mental distress, and suicide risk among adolescents, according to a review of studies.
The review, published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal , focussed on smartphone use, and did not consider online gaming.
