How NOT to look at their smartphone while zombie walking on a train platform or stairs.
Smartphones should be programmed to send tiny electrical shocks into your hand when you walk while reading them. Put the thing in your pocket until you clear the field.
I’m a TESOL teacher. Learning to use technology — appropriately — has always been a part of my job.
It’s the “appropriate” part that has difficult to deal with the past few years.
Yeah. Hi, Chat.
Forget about Zoom, LMS, video editing software, and all sorts of online sites that don’t need any knowledge of programming language.
I was making my own web pages in basic HTML and JavaScript back when people still though InternetExplorer was a good browser.
But tech is nothing more than a tool. And tools can be used well and badly.
And often the simple tech of a piece of paper and a pencil are all you need. No bandwagon mentality here.
So if anything I would say that, although I have always used technology to some degree for my job, I have had the luxury of experience (and a lot of mistakes!) to figure out when technology can help my job, and when it just gets in the way.
(FWIW I also teach a one-semester class about language, identity, and technology. And yes, we do analyze our selfies.)
Thanks to all who asked for a copy of Bringer of Light in the recent Goodreads giveaway!
Congratulations if you were a winner, and if you were not chosen by the system, take heart: there will be another giveaway in the near future. Thank you for your interest in my science fiction! I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoy writing it!
Interestingly, they position this advancement as progress in privacy rights; “In addition, they protect individuals’ privacy and the required equipment can be bought at a reasonable price,” they wrote.
“I’m less frightened by a Sydney that’s playing into my desire to cosplay a sci-fi story than a Bing that has access to reams of my personal data and is coolly trying to manipulate me on behalf of whichever advertiser has paid the parent company the most money.
“Nor is it just advertising worth worrying about. What about when these systems are deployed on behalf of the scams that have always populated the internet? How about on behalf of political campaigns? Foreign governments? “I think we wind up very fast in a world where we just don’t know what to trust anymore,” Gary Marcus, the A.I. researcher and critic, told me. “I think that’s already been a problem for society over the last, let’s say, decade. And I think it’s just going to get worse and worse.”