Well, I’m sorry.
I just wanted to get a discussion going on how dependent people have become on mobile phones and how long it would take to adjust to their removal. Hence the very hypothetical hypothetical.
It’s interesting just how wildly different people’s views are.
Another reference I’m missing, apparently.
The way you were going on I was getting the impression it was closer to 30%. Before iceberging. I found the reality informative.
And you are obviously overestimating everying by the most pessimistic assumptions imaginable, IMHO.
snip. I expect most people to have to rely on other services (like that scary scary email) for a while, but between the government declaring them “too big to fail” (which would be literally true, in respect to phone service in general), and promises of future land lines, I expect them to be able to hold together. Alternative scenarios would seem to require premises like the entire government failing or whatnot, or the government surviving and instead socializing phone service, neither of which seem probable. (But then I guess I’m huffing bunnies, so what do I know?)
Serious answer: government action. Loans, support, socialization, you name it, you customize it for the country in question, I don’t care.
The funny thing is, most people consider me a pessimist.
So frigging what? Suppose, for a moment, that you’re huddled in your house, scared that the langoleirs will get you because they ate your phone. Also, the president had to close the stock market for three days straight. Do you call the fire department?
“Scary bad stuff” = “crisis”, and “need to call the fire department” = crisis, but “scary bad stuff” =/= “need to call the fire department”. Words are just funny that way. So when you say “to call for emergency or other public services…even more so when there is an ongoing crisis”, then yeah, you are definitely connecting crisis dots that don’t need connecting. Which I believe characterizes much of your position in this discussion.
Argument by absurdity works better when the point I’m arguing is actually absurd.
Argument by non-sequiter? This email business really has you backed up against a wall.
I had a great weekend; thanks!
And qpw3141, I like this hypothetical. And it’s worth nothing that by the point you actually want to discuss, “how dependent people have become on mobile phones and how long it would take to adjust to their removal”, there doesn’t seem to be any decent argument that it would take any time at all. On that subject the stock market stuff is beside the point, the panic stuff is beside the point, leaving us just asking how long we have to use e-mail until they finally put the land lines in.
[QUOTE=begbert2]
Another reference I’m missing, apparently.
[/QUOTE]
It’s from Con Air.
Well that’s good. I’m glad it was informative for you. Even before the ‘iceberging’.
Possibly I am…but you are underestimating everything by a much larger degree. IMHO of course.
Stop huffing bunnies would be my suggestion. To paraphrase, ‘Use that email or the bunny gets it!’.
So, basically, magical solutions that will just make everything ok. Gotcha.
You might very well be, on subjects where you have expertese. It’s clear that you do NOT have any real experience with this particular subject, however. Hell, you’ve admitted you don’t really use or like cell phones, and you don’t need or rely on the technology. For YOU, it would be no big deal…and you are basing all of your arguments in this thread on that viewpoint. You would be able to simply use your land line (which you probably DO rely on, both at work and at home) and email/internet, so you project that to everyone else and then shake your head in genuine puzzlement over why folks don’t see it the way you do.
I completely understand where you are coming from and why you think the way you do. Your own experience runs contrary to what others are telling you, and logically (from your own logical view point) it just doesn’t seem reasonable. Totally understandable. Unfortunately, it’s also totally wrong, but I really don’t know what more to say to ‘prove’ this to you that hasn’t already been said.
Nope…I just hope on email and then everything is good again. 
Ah…but see, you have to actually read what I’m writing in context with, well, what I’m writing plus the thrust of my argument. I’ve tried to explain to you earlier in the thread that the fire department’s ability to respond to problems, especially initially is going to be sorely degraded. You don’t see it or understand it…I mean, they have EMAIL!..plus ‘land. lines’. So, what’s the problem? I’ve explained what the problems would be, over and over again, but you simply go back to the fact that they still have email and land lines, and around and around it goes.
So, in the context of what I’m saying ‘ongoing crisis’ is only peripherally related to the ‘langoleirs will get you because they ate your phone’ aspects, and mainly is due to the degradation in their ability to respond to calls considering the disruptions to their systems and processes. I know, I know…they have email. And phones. And you don’t ‘believe’ (In Your Honest Opinion, and based on your vast experience on this subject) that they rely on cell phone communications or cellular networks in how they operate today (they’ve only been around for 15 years after all, and we got by without them before, etc etc). I’m not trying to convince you of any of this, since I don’t believe that you are convince-able…you believe what you believe, and that’s that. I’m just pointing out that you are conflating several things I was saying there and then using a strawman to tie them together.
But from my perspective, your argument IS absurd. It’s absurd to thing that a crisis on this scale would be fixable in a couple of days or a week or two. It’s absurd to not see how just the stock market effects would cause panic and financial issues, leaving aside all the OTHER issues that have been pointed out to you in this thread and that you have hand-waved away or dismissed with equally absurd assertions that email and land lines will save the day (in that couple of days or a few weeks at most). In short, your entire argument in this thread is coming from a perspective of ignorance of just about every aspect of the issue being discussed.
And, of course, the entire argument in the OP is absurd, since it would take a magical or supernatural event to cause it to happen in the way asked for in the OP. Like the Dies the Fire Alien Space Bats, it would take some kind of magic or technology so advanced it looks like magic to us (or, I suppose the intervention of the gods, as in the story).
If it makes you feel good to thing that, I’m all for it! That email rejoinder totally has me against the wall and on the run. It’s definitely the panacea solution to all the worlds woes…
Excellent…glad to hear it. 
-XT
These “magical solutions” have already been employed in real life. You may or may not have noticed that there’s been a little thingy going on lately with the economy - surely not bad enough to call a “crisis”, of course. And that in response to it, the government has been hemorrhaging money left and right, in various and sundry ways, with various and sundry effects.
I’d have thought this historical precedent placed government assistance squarely in the “non-magical possibility” arena. Who knew?
You don’t have a shred more experience than I do. You use cell phones. Whoopdie do. Page me when you turn into a financial advisor or economist (preferably both), and then maybe I’ll stop interpreting your criticisms of my experience as somebody in a glass house throwing stones - from inside their own house.
Yeah yeah, you’re the king of Experience.
You have utterly failed to demonstrate that the police will be less able to respond to the nonexistent increase in demand that you flippantly invented to make your crisis seem more crisislike. And yes, I’m aware that you argued fervently that the loss of non-cell-phone police devices would impede their effectiveness. But those devices aren’t cell phones. So you’re back to square zero.
Mocking email in the hot sun.
I fought the hypothetical and the hypothetical won,
I needed counterarguments 'cause I had none,
I fought the hypothetical and the hypothetical won…
You have yet to make the slightest serious argument against email being a significant and immediate replacement for lost phone communication. Had you noticed that? You cut straight to the mockery. How do you suppose that looks?
[QUOTE=begbert2]
These “magical solutions” have already been employed in real life. You may or may not have noticed that there’s been a little thingy going on lately with the economy - surely not bad enough to call a “crisis”, of course. And that in response to it, the government has been hemorrhaging money left and right, in various and sundry ways, with various and sundry effects.
[/QUOTE]
Indeed. And, last time I checked, it’s taking longer than a day or two or maybe a week to recover. Of course, we DO still have land lines and email (not to mention cell phones), so maybe that makes a difference.
Seemingly not you.
No…I RELY on cell phones. You do not. My BUSINESS RELIES on cell phones. Yours does not. I WORK WITH CELL PHONES AND CELL NETWORKS EVERY DAY…you barely use one and disdain them, thinking of them as toys.
I’ll stop criticizing your meager experience when you acknowledge that it’s a major blind spot in your thinking on this subject. I’m not holding my breath here…
Comparatively speaking? Yeah…I am. Thanks for acknowledging that.
I have utterly failed to demonstrate this TO YOU. Sometime, sadly, ignorance can’t be fought. While on other subjects I think you are a good and interesting debater, on this one you are ignorant…and you are militantly unwilling to learn or even listen to any argument that runs contrary to your rather sheltered and silly world experience wrt how cell phones are used today (as opposed to how they were used 15 years ago, which you seem fixated on).
I’m glad you are willing to acknowledge that you have no counterarguments (:p), but really you should join the haiku thread in the Pit…I know this is not in a haiku format, but I think you have a real chance and should give it a whirl.
To anyone with even a shred of knowledge on this subject? My guess is they are laughing at your assertion that email can replace cell phones and the functionality of cellular networks in the short or medium term. I hadn’t wanted to point out that your argument, from the perspective of most tech people, is basically laughable, but since you insist on an answer I’ll tell you…it’s one of the more silly arguments you’ve made thus far. I know YOU think it’s a zinger, but, sadly, as with most of your arguments in this thread, you are wrong.
-XT
We’ve already discussed your work, in depth. You could do without cell phones just fine - the main difference being that you would not get updates while driving. As best I can tell, I even got you to (reluctantly) admit this. So when you persist in asserting (in CAPS!) of how utterly indispensible they are, you’re not doing yourself or your cell phone experience any favors regarding its usefulness at judging, well, anything.
Additionally, of course, all your recent arguments have had precisely nothing whatseoever to do with expertise in the use and repair of cells and cell networks. They’ve had everything to do with the effects on the economy by the financial shock of losing the cell companies. It would be pretty nifty if you acknowledge that your experience with cell phones (meager or plentiful) is utterly useless as a credential in the discussion of the economics of the situation, but honestly I figure you’d rather die first.
And yet you still utterly fail to actually make an argument against email being a significant and immediate replacement for lost phone communication, instead presenting a feeble and (also) fallacious argument from your own asserted authority, with a dash of argument from silent stealth supporters for comedic spice.
I’m going to pretend for a moment that I actually think that your longtime use of cell phones gives you some shred of credibility, and ask you to present your own opinion of why email is so utterly, utterly useless to the world. I know, it hurts your feelings to have to release the secrets of the Cell Phone Addicts Cabal, but I implore you, for the sake of your own credibility, expose these dark mysteries to the light of day.
I spent pages answering this question, to my mind, but what the hell…I’ll pound my head against the wall again.
[QUOTE=begbert2]
I’m going to pretend for a moment that I actually think that your longtime use of cell phones gives you some shred of credibility, and ask you to present your own opinion of why email is so utterly, utterly useless to the world. I know, it hurts your feelings to have to release the secrets of the Cell Phone Addicts Cabal, but I implore you, for the sake of your own credibility, expose these dark mysteries to the light of day.
[/QUOTE]
Leaving aside the snark (which, I have to say, was disappointing…you are MUCH better at snark than this! I’ve seen you snark with the best of them, man), the simple answer is that email has the same issues as land lines when it comes to capabilities. That is, in order for me to get my email in this brave new world, I have to go to be somewhere I can connect to the internet. I need to plug in, or at least go into someplace like Starbucks to check my email, to see if there is anything in my inbox. I won’t be notified (like I am today with, you know, my cell phone) that I HAVE email…I have to take the time to go in and check to see if I have any. If I don’t, then off I go…and possibly 1.5 seconds later, I get a whole batch of emails telling me not to go where ever I’m now headed. Which I won’t get until after I stop, 2 miles later, to check to see if I have emails (oh, and best check my voice mail and with my answering service as well while I’m at it).
This could be either a little or big hit to productivity…for those of us who USE the things, obviously. For those who don’t (the, what? 9% of the population, approximately?), it won’t be. So, when I go to lunch, for instance, no one will be able to reach me…well, unless I go to the pay phone to check my messages several times through lunch time, or leave the number with my handy dandy call service, or go to lunch some place that has WiFi and I take my laptop with me (AND check constantly to see if I have email). If there is an emergency, well, that’s too bad. I’ll get to it when I get back…hope it’s not important.
All these hits, big and small will add up, because this will be effecting literally billions of people…hundreds of millions in the US alone. On top of the financial hit you downplay, there is going to be a productivity hit as well. Email…land line…WiFi…all of them simply can’t, today, come even close to the capabilities of cell phones. Why? Well, at it’s base, because if they could THEY WOULD BE DOING IT NOW. They aren’t. They could and will be used as stop gaps, but they won’t come close to bridging the capabilities that we’ll lose by the loss of cell phones…certainly not in days, weeks or months. Probably not in years. Decades? Yeah…in decades (or even, say, a couple years…I’m thinking 5 at most), assuming the whole thing doesn’t go tits up, and assuming that all other forms of radio and wireless networks still work, I could see metro area WiFi replacing cell phones, with wider spread radio networks acting as stop gaps (though that would cause a host of other problems, IMHO). But a couple days? A few weeks? A month or two? Not a chance in hell.
And it will be all of the problems, big and small, that are going to snowball the crisis into larger proportions than you seem to understand or realize. No one aspect of it (aside from the unknown severity of how bad the markets will go if every cell carrier, supplier, distributor, developer, manufacturer, etc etc goes tits up or takes a huge hit to their revenue overnight) would probably be devastating…but all together? I’d say that it would make the Great Depression look like a mild economic downturn.
I DO acknowledge that…freely, and unequivocally. I have very little background in economics or economic theory. I’m not remotely qualified to speak on the subject. I DID stay at a Holiday Inn last week, but the effect has worn off.
However, it doesn’t take an economic rocket scientist (to mix professions), to realize that an event that effects several billion people on a global scale, one that takes out an entire business SECTOR, is going to have wide ranging and negative impacts on the economies of every nation on earth (aside from, possibly, Outer Mongolia and…well, not sure who else will be immune). Even though I’m a tyro, I know THAT much…and I know that it’s laughable to predict a couple days or a week or two of effects, when even the current crisis (which, after all, effected less people, and wasn’t caused by the entire collapse of the housing/banking industry…merely a re-adjustment in the market) has lasted well over a year, and it’s not over yet.
-XT
Leaving aside the snark (which, I have to say, was disappointing…you are MUCH better at snark than this! I’ve seen you snark with the best of them, man), the simple answer is that email has the same issues as land lines when it comes to capabilities. That is, in order for me to get my email in this brave new world, I have to go to be somewhere I can connect to the internet. I need to plug in, or at least go into someplace like Starbucks to check my email, to see if there is anything in my inbox. I won’t be notified (like I am today with, you know, my cell phone) that I HAVE email…I have to take the time to go in and check to see if I have any. If I don’t, then off I go…and possibly 1.5 seconds later, I get a whole batch of emails telling me not to go where ever I’m now headed. Which I won’t get until after I stop, 2 miles later, to check to see if I have emails (oh, and best check my voice mail and with my answering service as well while I’m at it).
This could be either a little or big hit to productivity…for those of us who USE the things, obviously. For those who don’t (the, what? 9% of the population, approximately?), it won’t be. So, when I go to lunch, for instance, no one will be able to reach me…well, unless I go to the pay phone to check my messages several times through lunch time, or leave the number with my handy dandy call service, or go to lunch some place that has WiFi and I take my laptop with me (AND check constantly to see if I have email). If there is an emergency, well, that’s too bad. I’ll get to it when I get back…hope it’s not important.
[/QUOTE]
Snark is a fine and delicate art; one needs to carefully balance entertainment value (which has three components: self, audience, target), clarity of message, and insult, with the aim of maximizing the desired components without compromising others. This is especially delicate when one wishes to keep the insult dialed to just behind the point where one destroys the discussion by turning it into a pure snarkfest. (And it’s especially easy when one sees little value in the intellectual aspect of the discussion at all - for examples of that, see the Obama Loyalists thread.) I apologize for my poor performance in the art here.
Want to hear something peculiar? My email at both work and home notifies me when it gets a new message. Now, it’s possible to miss the notification, but the notification does occur. I dunno about my work one but I know that my home one does it via interaction with my instant messenger program (which also displays a persistent notification of unread messages, so that it can’t be missed.)
Another curious side note is that at my office, instant messenger has almost completely supplanted the use of intraoffice land lines. There’s only one guy in my section who still telephones the people in the office; the rest have eschewed phones entirely for the more productive medium. But I digress.
Presuming for a moment that we limit ourselves to first-week changes, and thus leave out things like pagers which would require time to acquire, the removal of cell phones would doubtlessly remove your ability to receive instant notification of messages while you are neither near a land line nor a computer with internet. The thing is, though, with the notable exception of while you are actually driving (and I think that answering a cell phone while driving should be justifiably considered a criminal act on the level of drunk driving), it’s not really that hard to be near an internet-ready computer at all times, if you need to be. You said so yourself - you would be forced to lunch at some place that has WiFi and bring your laptop with you (and check it constantly/have it rigged to notify you somehow). Or even - gasp! - bring a lunch to work and eat at your desk. It is doable. Without discernible loss of efficiency. (Aside from when actually driving.)
Lifestyle changes would be required of you, yes. (Well, presuming that you just must be immediately contactable at all times, which I will allow for your specific case.) But by making these lifestyle changes, the effect on your efficiency can be mitigated to trivial levels.
A few things. First, I note that you are basing your argument on the assumption that “literally billions of people” are as important as you. That is, that most or all persons who have cell phones are 1) using them for work, and 2) need to be available at a moment’s notice for their work to avoid suffering a loss of efficiency. Personally, I think this is a clearly unsupportable assumption; not only is it the case that lots of cell phones are toys, but it’s also the case that many people only work while they’re actually at work. Some people (I can confirm at least 1 with certainty) actually are on a lunch break from work when at lunch.
Am I saying that all people leave their work at work? No. I’d even freely grant that the more critical you are to a more critical company, the greater the chance that you actually do use your cell phone to be constantly contactable. However the mass of people who don’t live like this still drastically undercut the assumptions that underpin your argument. I’m quite confident that most people won’t even have to take their laptops to lunch.
Secondly, you make the incorrect statement “all of them simply can’t, today, come even close to the capabilities of cell phones. Why? Well, at it’s base, because if they could THEY WOULD BE DOING IT NOW.” This statement is actually pretty obviously false, I think; other alternatives could come very close to being equally capable, and people still might choose cell phones over them, for a variety of reasons. The difference could even be negligible or even completely nonexistent, from the perspective of the work that needs to be done. For example, suppose that at my office all the land lines disappeared one day. Poof. That one guy who still calls people? He’d learn to use IM quite quickly, I’m confident. He doesn’t do it now because he doesn’t have to.
The relates to how you periodically remind me that you RELY on cell phones. (The capital letters are required.) Well, of course you do - but you don’t NEED cell phones. There’s a difference, you see. For example, I currently RELY on yogurt to give me virtually all of my dairy nutrition. I don’t drink milk or eat cheese or ice cream or e-mail: just yogurt. If all the yogurt in the world disappeared, would I die of malnutrition? Nope. I’d just break down, grab the knife, and start cutting the cheese.
So yeah. I don’t doubt for a minute that you currently RELY on cell phones to meet your constant contactability needs. But I’m pretty confident that if your cell phone disappeared, you wouldn’t tell your boss, “sorry, I won’t be able to be contacted anymore. I don’t check my email enough for it to be useful for that, see.” I suspect you’d actually become acquainted with one alternative or another very quickly.
Putting this issue of Verizon getting government assistance (back) aside for the moment, I think that I’ve done a fair job of showing that most or virtually all of your speculated “efficiency” problems would be negligible or nonexistent. Leaving you nothing to build your snowball out of. Yes, there would be some kind of economic downturn if we include the staggering cell companies in the hypothetical (which I’m not sure was the OP’s intent), but this other problem you posit of efficiency loss is almost completely vacuous. People’s behaviors would have to change, but they would not inherently have to get worse, not for all the billions of people who happen to own cell phones.
This will probably give you an aneurism, but I’m not really certain that the collapse of the cell phone companies (which would not all fold, since they provide other services that the government has a vested interest in maintaining) is even relevent to this thread. My read of the OP is that he was only interested in the actual boots-on-the-ground effeciency and lifestyle changes. Which I hope clarifies my lack of excitement in this particular sub-topic; there are several possible discussions we could be having in this thread, and in some of them Verizon’s fate isn’t even relevent.
That said, I have stayed in a holiday inn last night, and the current economic situation is not the result of any single cluster of companies folding, nor could it have been, It was, I believe, the result of a long-term poisoning of a large portion of our country’s asset base, which (when it came to light) not only caused house values to plumed, but also directly destabilized major parts of our banking system. These systems were directly connected, and so the ripples spread wide and with undiminished force, with similarly enduring effects.
Contrariwise, cell phone companies are not as central a part of our economy as our banks and banking insurers. They’re just companies. Big companies, but just companies nonetheless. I am quite confident that the market would react to their loss in a way that is not even remotely similar to how it reacted to the threats to the banks. The stockmarket would drop -well their stocks would at least-, but I don’t see how that would make people less confident in the value of, say, oil, or banks, or lending. I simply see no mechanism for the kind of collapse you are imagining. (Keeping in mind that efficiency in general will be nearly uneffected.)
[QUOTE=begbert2]
Snark is a fine and delicate art; one needs to carefully balance entertainment value (which has three components: self, audience, target), clarity of message, and insult, with the aim of maximizing the desired components without compromising others. This is especially delicate when one wishes to keep the insult dialed to just behind the point where one destroys the discussion by turning it into a pure snarkfest. (And it’s especially easy when one sees little value in the intellectual aspect of the discussion at all - for examples of that, see the Obama Loyalists thread.) I apologize for my poor performance in the art here.
[/QUOTE]
No worries…I just have high expectations from you, based on past experience. Many a time you have nearly had to replace my monitor at home due to projectile laughter when you are cutting up one poster or another…
Do you want to hear something peculiar? My email notifies me as well! Not only that…hold onto your horses here…but my IM notifies me both when I get an email AND when someone is sending me a message!
I know, I know…it’s hard to credit. The key thing, though, is I have to be at a computer to get these wonderful messages…or my iPod needs to be connected to a WiFi network. Well…that’s not true, since, you see, my phone currently handles all this. But in the brave new world we are positing here, the phone wouldn’t be working, so if I wanted to get email I’d need to be at a computer that is connected to a network.
Well, a couple of things. First off, my job requires me (no caps) to move around a lot…that means I’d be having to constantly plug in my computer (where WiFi isn’t available) to check my email…otherwise, I wouldn’t be getting the messages. Leaving aside the driving while using the cell phone aspect (that’s what Bluetooth headsets are for BTW), my phone notifies me (again, no caps or bolding) when I have emails, messages, texts, IM’s and all that other stuff. Now, granted, I COULD manually boot up a computer and check my emails every 5 minutes I’m not in my office, but that’s going to take time. Oh, it won’t be all THAT long (assuming I can find places to connect to), but it will add up. 5 minutes here, 5 minutes there. No big deal when it’s just XT…a lowering of my own productivity isn’t that big an issue (except to my boss and my customers), but this isn’t going to just effect me…it’s going to effect everyone. My 5 minute delay would compound your 5 minute delay (you had to run to the bathroom, then you got a call and were thirsty so went to get some water, then you checked your computer and found that you had 20 messages in your voice mail, and 50 emails in your inbox), and maybe an hour delay back to me (I went to lunch and, sadly, all the WiFi places were packed from all the other folks who don’t have cell phones anymore, so I had to eat somewhere with no WiFi…sorry, couldn’t check my magic email), and so on. Multiply that by millions of times and even a 1 minute delay per person starts to add up to a serious productivity hit.
I disagree but don’t see the point in continuing to go around and around on this. Will lifestyles change? Yeah. Will this happen overnight? Not a chance. In a week? No way. Month? Nope. 6 months? Yeah…maybe. A year? Certainly. And in the mean time, it will cause serious issues.
Well, what percentage of people do you posit are as ‘important’ as me? Keep in mind, I’m not all that unusual for folks in the tech field. So…what do you suppose the number of folks who user their cell phones for work might be? A quarter? That’s still ‘billions’. A 10th? Not ‘billions’ anymore, but still hundreds of millions.
And it’s the ‘billions’ or ‘hundreds of millions’ of the most productive people…in your own terms, the most ‘important’. That’s going to cause more disruptions and dislocations in the most critical sectors of business and technology, since these are the very people who use their cell phones as I describe, and who are going to be the most heavily impacted.
As to being available at a moments notice, that depends on your job. Currently, I could be at the water cooler, or at lunch, or in a meeting, and get notified that a critical part of a customers network has gone down. How will I get those notifications in the brave new world? Will someone wander through the halls calling for me to come quickly? Will there be strategically positioned runners, poised to take the critical call and go tearing off in search of the XT? Will the emergency just have to wait until I wander back into my office, or patch in my laptop onto the customers network to check my email or stop by a pay phone to check my messages? Or will I have to be chained to my desk 24/7 with some sort of robot XT to go out and do all the work I need to do that can’t be done from my office? And what about all the other millions of workers just like me who aren’t chained to their office, and who don’t have the luxury of being assured of getting an uninterrupted lunch if there is an emergency?
Possibly…though, again, I think that the number of people who aren’t ‘important’ but who rely (no caps or special emphasis) on their cell phones today are much greater than you seem willing to admit. And this isn’t limited to just the tech field.
No…the difference is that with a cell phone I can be anywhere, if I don’t have one then I need to be physically connected to a traditional network, be it physical connection or WiFi. No network, no IM, no email, no notifications. Poof.
It’s not a matter of knowing IM…I dare say that most people who have cell phones have at least a rudimentary knowledge of this rather esoteric (irony not emphasized) technology…many of them actually have their IM on their cell phones. The difference is in capability.
It’s a false equivalency. If you want it to be similar, then say you can use milk as an alternative, but sadly you’d have to drive 50 miles every time you had to get some, since there is no milk available in your area. Plus, all the other folks who now have to live a yogurt free existence will also need to do the same thing…and you’ll be competing with them to try and buy the suddenly limited supply of milk until they work out all the production issues.
No, what I’d tell my boss (not that he wouldn’t know already) is that, sorry, we will probably need to hire a couple more network engineers and tier 1 and 2 techs, since we’ll be more tied to the office than we are now, and since there will be more of a chance that we’ll miss messages. Oh, and we’ll need to buy new handsets for the help desk, a couple new POE switches, and need to extend the WiFi network to encompass the entire building and probably the campus. We have the budge for that, right? It’s probably going to take a bit longer than a week, though…
I’m sure you think you’ve shown this. I don’t believe you have, but I’m happy that you feel you have.
I’m not sure about the intent of the OP either…my guess is that s/he probably agrees with you, as, I suspect, do the majority of 'dopers.
Checks head Nope…no aneurysm detected. If you don’t feel it’s relevant, as I’ve said before, that’s fine by me. I disagree, but then I disagree that the effects on efficiency and on lifestyle would be minor and easily overcome as well, so we might as well make it a clean sweep. To me, the sudden loss of all cell phones ties in with the sudden tits up aspect of cell phone companies, and so ties in to the question. If we merely posit that cell phones suddenly stop working and that this changes absolutely nothing else then the question is even more ridiculous, and even more uncoupled from reality…so, any answer is meaningless. JMHO of course, and obviously YMMVs…wildly.
Tyro that I am, I’m aware that the housing bubble was a BUBBLE (emphasis added for humor)…and thus, did not appear overnight fully formed. Much like every other bubble in history. However, it was a bubble…the housing and banking industry readjusted, they didn’t disappear completely or suddenly overnight. There are still banks. There are still houses. There are still construction companies making houses…and banks. We have not passed a housing or banking event horizon, we have not decided to forgo (or Fargo) banking and go back to hunting and gathering, or decide, as a society, that caves really would be best.
Yet, cell phones are part of banking and banking insurers. Not just due to the fact that hundred of billions in investment is tied up in them, or the fact that they are publically traded in the stock market, but because the IT departments of those banks yler (spelled backwards for emphasis) on cell phones to maintain and support them. This leaves aside the fact that the bankers also dépendre (helpfully translated into French) on cell phones for their day to day business.
Just as a point of interest, real estate agents also rely (left as is) on cell phones…as do many in the construction industry. Also, many yogurt manufacturers also use (I’m tired of writing or emphasizing, translating or otherwise uttering the word ‘rely’) cell phones as well.
I do not share your confidence, but have enjoyed the discussion with you. It’s been interesting, though I have to say that sometimes I wonder if I picked a bad year to give up drinking heavily…
-XT
Well, see, I still consider certain aspects of this conversation potentially salvageable. This necessitates an unseemly restraint.
When I change my mind, you’ll know it.
You are the perfect storm of cell phone reliance, though. You cannot go to the bathroom without being poised to clench mid-shit, grab trou, and run to your car to enact your repair, since every second is crucial. If you spend two extra minutes strolling back to your desk from the water cooler rather than throwing your half-full cup in the air and charging to your car, tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars will be lost. And you are making these mid-activity lunges constantly, such that the inability to detect these calls the split-second they are made would require hiring two more techs to fill in those five minute gaps.
Two points:
I’m sure the hyperbole is entertaining, but when I see the exaggeration I seriously disbelieve that you would have an argument if you presented your case realistically. Which puts you in the unenviable position of having to choose between being funny and having some chance of making your case. Not that your odds are good anyway; you are trying to argue from the extreme example when I know darned well that most people already aren’t on the jump to the absurd degree you describe.
And, again, you don’t multiply these effects; you can’t even accurately add them, since they might be happening concurrently. If two men spend the same ten minutes in the john before attempting to call each other, then the total delay to people down the line is only ten minutes.
Naah, it’ll be done as soon as your boss tells you “just stop whining and check your frigging e-mail!”
Who both use their phones for work and are as important as you describe yourself as being? Such that you can’t delay answering a call for long enough to zip and wash your hands? Maybe one in a million, to guess generously.
It’s the price you pay for using hyperbole in your anecdotes. And for skipping over the difference between “people who use their phones for work” and “folks in the tech field”/“important folks”.
And most people in the tech field, last time I checked, spend a lot of time near an internet-ready computer anyway.
Four possible answers off the top of my head. Your boss will decide:
However, the number of people who are important and don’t have to make house calls is pretty high too. An important person who spends his days locked in the basement with the servers is close at hand to a computer.
The difference is indeed in their “capability” by which you mean “the ability to be contacted when outside of the designated ‘contactable zones’”. (Cell phones technically have this limitation too, but with a wide area.) The thing is, while I suppose it’s handy (though unsanitary) to use your cell phone while in the john, I find the notion that the business world hinges on toilet teleconferencing literally incredible.
Nope; for most people, the milk is already right there. Computers aren’t that uncommon.
I don’t believe one nanosecond that your cell phone allows you to do the work of three men, assuming all else remained equal. That’s even charitably assuming that you get cell-phone calls to re-direct you en-route on a disturbingly frequent basis.
And while I do believe that all the work you describe would be done as expediently as possible, I don’t believe that the company will shut down and send everyone home until it takes place. Work will continue apace…with three or four days of hasty retraining (“This is your email…”) and long-hour days patching things (“Somebody change the web page quick!”) and then (worst case) everyone staying ten minutes longer to make up for the delays in their day spent on their breaks. (Or maybe, just you.)
I don’t feel too bad; I don’t really believe that reason can convince you in this matter anyway, at least not until you internalize the difference between “need” and “rely”.
Based on the tone of the OP, and the rather overt lack of expected panic, they might actually be mentally comparing “world with cell phones” with “world that never had them”.
Which would presumably in your mind look much, much worse than the world did in 1980.
Right. And as I pointed out, “rely” is not, not, not a synonym for “need”. It’s just what they’re using right now.
And if we’re going to presume that we’re including the cell phone company restructuring/stock market effects in the mix, I’m afraid that I can’t accept the theory that the government action would be completely ineffective in preventing the companies that offer alternate services from failing. Thus their stock would slowly recover to a point…eventually. I don’t believe either of us is positioned to debate the other long term effects on the stock market of this - you can crow “we’re all gonna die!” all you like, but you don’t have the chops to back it up any more than I do to refute it.
Isn’t it always a bad year to give up drinking heavily?
Sheesh…are we the only ones responding in this thread?? In any event, I don’t see anything really different that you’ve said here in your latest post that you haven’t already said and that I haven’t already addressed. A couple of much better snide remarks about hyperbole that I can only admire, and a few new twists on your email theme, but nothing substantially different. If there is anything specific you’d actually like me to address, or think would be interesting for me to do so, I’ll be happy to post my thoughts tomorrow (probably from my cell phone as I’ll be flying part of the day :p), but if not I’m happy to leave things as they are and let the thread die out, unless someone else wants to give their two cents worth.
As always, it was a pleasure talking to you begbert2…I just hope that in the next thread I can admire your cutting wit from a safe distance and perhaps from the same side!
-XT
Hey I was still paying attention! I stopped reading, everything but jokes, but I was wondering how long this would go on.
At this point I think I could probably survive letting this thread die; it’s not like either of us is going to convince the other, after all. I don’t think we’d previously touched on the particular advantage of cell phones in that they allow you to save those precious seconds while on the toilet or refilling your coffee cup; however I’m willing to accept that that was all comedic hyperbolic exaggeration and that there was no argument underneath it if you wish :p.
In my estimation the weakest parts of your efficiency-loss argument are that 1) when one strips the hyperbole and absurd extremes out of your argument, there doesn’t seem to be much argument left, and 2) you are projecting the extremely time-critical nature of your communications on a work populace that, by and large, is not bound by such rigid responsiveness requirements. (And the more serious you actually are about needing to be interruptible on the pot, the smaller the set of people there are that are similarly bound.)
I assume you can see that the number and degree to which people share your need for instant responsiveness directly effects the degree to which they would find alternate solutions effective in meeting their work needs. So to argue compellingly that people wouldn’t find alternatives like email effective, you need to make arguments and examples that apply to as many people in the workplace as possible. No fun, I know.