You know those rude jerks that keep a Bluetooth earpiece in their ear even when they’re not using it? I’m one of them. To me, it falls under the rubric of being the change I want to see in the world. Not that people should be rude jerks, but that Bluetooth earpieces should be normalized.
Also, I forget it’s there.
In the alternate universe in “Fringe” they wear their variants of earpieces much of the time. Which is, in my mind, as it should be. Until that day, I will take it out when social circumstance demands it (I’m not going to wear it to a job interview, or a family/social gathering), but when I’m shopping running errands, I am more inclined to leave it in than most.
Recently, Clancy was looking over the medical records for Lain. Much of it was pretty straightforward. There was a comment about me, however. They referred to my having “abnormal bonding” with Lain. It was noted that the football game was on the TV and that I had the earpiece in my ear.
The football game was indeed on, but I was at best barely interested in it. I didn’t even bother to have the volume on. With regard to the earpiece, guilty as charged I suppose. I most likely wasn’t listening to anything if she was awake and in my arms, but it was indeed there and sends certain unfortunate signals.
I won’t lie and say that the comment didn’t sting a little bit. I also recognize that whoever wrote that was merely doing their job and putting down their observations. So I don’t hold a grudge. Not towards the nurse. Somewhat towards society.
We have two ears. Having one of them have an earpiece just doesn’t strike me as problematic. If I’m listening to anything, I’ll put my “one sec!” finger up and turn it off or simply take it out of my ear (and go back and locate wherever I was on the track).
The iPhone 5 got some remarks about the earjack being on the bottom. This is old hat for me, since my previous phone had the jack there. My current one has it on top, though I actually still put the phone in upside down due to the placement of the volume and power buttons. It really doesn’t make much of a difference, in the grander scheme of things.
What was missing from the whole discussion is that cell phones shouldn’t go into your pocket at all. Cell phones are why cell phone holsters were invented.
So yeah, in addition to being a rude jerk, I am also an incurable nerd. I wear a cell phone holster. Unapologetically.
But think about it, why shouldn’t we? My pocket real estate is important. Nevermind that phones have become increasingly slender and small, that’s one more object to rifle through when trying to find something else in your pocket. Meanwhile, on the holster, it has its own place.
Between smartphones, tablets, the occasional need for pens, and even Bluetooth earpieces if we’re not supposed to keep them in our ear, we need to rethink belts. Heck, these days we ought to be wearing utility belts with all of these things and anti-shark batspray (because you never know…).
I doubt I will ever get my utility belt, but the earpieces may come along with Google Glasses as more normalized behavior. It doesn’t seem to me that it would be that hard to add an earpiece to one of those things.
In the meantime, I will just have to keep an eye out for Bluetooth earpieces that look vaguely like hearing aids or something.
I found a holster that has belt loops (meaning it can’t just fall off like previous ones have) and I’m a happy camper. I’ll put my phone in my shirt pocket if I’m being lazy, or the holster is unavailable, but on T-shirt days, it’s grand to have the holster.
Right on, Jeff!
Wearing an earpiece seems too much like wearing jewelry. I hate having anything on my body. I barely tolerate clothes.and the cell goes in my pocket. There’s nothing else in there for it to get in the way of. But in the car it goes in the pocket beneath the radio, and once at work it goes on my desk. Carrying it…it’s a tool. I don’t carry a hammer or screwdriver around, so why would I carry my phone anymore than necessary? Besides, that way it’s easy to leave behind when I don’t want to be in touch.
I guess I have a different relationship to my phone than you do. I’m envisioning a comic book series: nerds v. Luddites.
I hate the damned thing. Not only do I carry a device that lets people interrupt me no matter what I’m doing, I pay to allow then that privilege.
That’s pretty much it.
Kraftwerk (perhaps apocryphally) have had a similar attitude for years, seeing the phone as a work-disrupting technology. Their studio landline phone had (has?) no ringer.
If you want to speak to them, you must call at a specific time of day; they will pick up the (non-ringing) phone at that specific time only, and if you are on the other end you get to speak with them.
In short, Kraftwerk are awesome.
I find my cell phone absolutely liberating. Without it, I just worry that someone might be trying to contact me and I can’t fully relax.
Also: Audiobooks!
It is an important life skill to learn how to hear your phone ring and not IMMEDATELY PICK IT UP AND LISTEN CAREFULLY TO WHAT THE PERSON IS SAYING BECAUSE IT MIGHT BE IMPORTANT!!!!!!!
It is not rude to let callers leave a message.
But James, I’m confused. How do you check Facebook on your phone if it’s in your pocket?
The big use of my phone is audio. That’s why I keep the thing in my ear. It’s nice to listen to audiobooks while I shop. (I miss being able to listen to TV shows, but maybe someday Android will be able to do what my WinMo phone has been able to do since 2005. Someday.)
Out of curiosity, do you wear a wristwatch? It’s becoming popular among guys to say that it’s nothing more than jewelry anymore (thanks to cellphones). I am not big into jewelry, but I’m all game if something is functional. The earpieces, and watches, are such to me.
How do you check Facebook on your phone if it’s in your pocket?
I keep getting emails from Facebook, so I must have set up an account at one time. I can’t remember the last time I looked at it, and I have no idea what my password is.
I don’t normally wear wristwatches, either, because they’re just as irritating to wear as any jewelry, but I do have a couple that I take to class in rooms that don’t have a clock–sometimes I put them on in my office and walk to class, where I immediately take them off and set them on the desk. I think I’m actually slightly not-fully-sane about having things hanging on my body; I wear a wedding band out of respect for my wife, but I find it physically irritating and sometimes have to take it off. Wristwatches are functional, though–it’s quicker to glance at your wrist than to pick up your phone.
Gratuitous irritating phone story: Yesterday in class I called a student out for texting in class. “I’m not texting,” she replied. OK, you’re looking down at your phone and your fingers are moving, so what are you doing? “Checking my email.” Oh, that’s all right then…wait, no it’s not. I threw her out of class; second student in the last two weeks.
Boy, you sure showed ’em. I bet they’ll totally respect you now, and remember your lessons well for years to come.
Doesn’t matter, Duck. It’s my job to make sure they learn.
Utility belt? Some days I need a fishin’ bandolier.
That’s the next step in my proposed evolution. One step at a time, though…
I want one device to carry. For 30+ years I’ve carried a black notebook that takes half-size (8.5×5.5 inch) paper. It has my calendar, all my lists, some pictures, and I take lots of notes in it in my cramped four-lines-of-text-to-the-inch handwriting. I want a device that lets me do all of that, especially the handwriting. It doesn’t have to understand the handwriting — although that would be cool — but it has to be an acceptably high-res version of paper and pen. Then stuff a cellphone into it (I’ll wear the Bluetooth headset), music player, and e-book reader. I’m not very demanding about form factor — volume and weight of a mid-sized hardback book is fine. Some sort of fold-shut case, with a separate small display on the outside so it can be a phone or other simple device without opening it or running the big screen. And as long as I’m dreaming, might as well say that one of the features of my black notebook is the pockets inside the cover where I can stash all those odd pieces of paper that still have to be dealt with (currently holding three coupons, the receipt from the dentist, and the little folder from the last time I donated blood with the info about who to call if I get sick.
And if whoever is designing it really wants to catch my attention… I use an APL interpreter as a desktop calculator on my Mac. Put that in the device, and let me hand-write all of the cryptic APL symbols. (If this statement makes sense to you, you’re probably showing your age.)
I think we may get there, eventually. Well, one main device and a number of accessories. Imagine a tablet, but with google glasses and bluetooth. The tablet stays in a pouch or your pocket much of the time. Quick stuff you do with the glasses and calls you make with voice command and bluetooth. It doesn’t seem too outlandish, though I think we’re a ways off.
The biggest problem is that I’ve reached an age where I’m no longer sure that I’ll still be here when such devices become available. Or if I’m here, that I’ll be competent to make use of them. As someone who spent more than 25 years doing forecasting of various sorts professionally, it’s really frustrating that the forecast I’m currently working out is long-term enough that I’m unlikely to be here to see whether I’m right.
I use an APL interpreter as a desktop calculator on my Mac
Wow. How do you enter all the crazy-ass APL characters?
It’s an archaic piece of software, started by Ken Thompson at Bell Labs, then went to Berkeley and Yale and Purdue and then back to me at the Labs. It was a toy, but once I ported it to a 32-bit machine, it was a useful toy. I took it to Bellcore and US West legally under the terms of the 1984 AT&T break-up. In the early 1990s, mostly through sheer stubbornness, I convinced the attorneys at all of those companies that giving the source code away for possible good will was worth more than any commercial value. Over a period of years, I ended up porting the code to a whole bunch of different systems with C compilers. That task has gotten more difficult over time because the code assumes heavily that pointers and ints are interchangeable. You can google for “michael cain” and “apl\11” and still come up with references.
The interpreter uses a bizarre mapping of ASCII characters to represent the APL character set. Where the appearance matches, the characters are used directly: eg, ASCII “+” is used for the addition operator. Some of the mapping is based on resemblance: the “%” character is used for the division operator because it resembles APL’s symbol. Some of the mapping is based on keyboard location: upper-case “L” for the box symbol because that’s where it occurs on the APL keyboard. For routine sorts of calculator things, I remember enough of the map. Back in the day, I wrote a considerable amount of actual APL code using the interpreter and got to the point where it all seemed fairly reasonable. The guy at Purdue who sent me the source code said that some of the grad students there had replaced the character ROM on a few ASCII terminals with a chip that produced the actual APL symbols. Somehow I never got around to writing a front/back end for the interpreter that used an actual APL font.
is “abnormal bonding” an actual term?
When I first read this, it took me a minute to grasp what the term meant (to me, “abnormal bonding” sounds like “Gets weepy and depressed and makes elaborate promises to ‘keep in touch’ whenever the UPS guy leaves”).
Who, exactly, wrote “abnormal bonding”? This might be the opinion of a person who might not operate with a clear definition of the term & who might not be qualified to make such a judgment. Better if you never read it!
I didn’t ask and I probably don’t want to know. I don’t think it was the doctor. My guess is one of the night nurses.
Bluetooth gets in the way of my earrings and messes with my hair when I wear it down, which is almost always. I just stick the phone in my purse or leave it on my desk at work. I miss tons of calls and texts, but I don’t feel like I have any other option.
Earpieces are useless for me. My hearing is poor and not really correctable – I can hear noise just fine. Resolving it into actual words is a struggle, esp. if I can’t get clues from the speakers face and/or there is any background noise. I HATE phones. Telecomms at work are sheer torture.
The day I can text from my watch and read response on google glasses, I’ll get nerdware and forget I even have it on. Until then, I not only don’t have Bluetooth earpieces, I don’t have any sort of fancy phone (mine is a $10 Trac phone that sits my purse in case I need to call 911). I can text from my tablet and watch movies with closed captioning (which is not legible on phone-sized screens).